


We Are Criminals and Dreamers (Desperate and Dying)

by ArtsyDeath



Category: Naruto
Genre: Age Difference, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Aromantic Kakuzu, Barebacking, Bisexual Female Character, Blood and Violence, Child Neglect, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Dubious Morality, Enemies With Benefits, Enemy Lovers, F/F, F/M, Female Character of Color, Gen, Identity Porn, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Knotting, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Morally Ambiguous Character, Multi, Nesting, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Open Relationships, Oral Sex, Platonic Relationships, Polyamory, Power Dynamics, Power Imbalance, Rough Sex, Scenting, The shinobi world is not kind, Touch-Starved, Trust Issues, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2020-04-06 18:35:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19068322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtsyDeath/pseuds/ArtsyDeath
Summary: The thing about the whole Alpha, Beta, and Omega thing this world had going for it?It wasn’t exactly something that had cropped up in her thirty-two-years of existence in her first world.Idealistically she might have taken a second chance of life and done something noncriminal with it but Kiri hadn’t exactly been serving up chances to thrive and between spending her first years of this life listening to the grunts of strangers fucking her mother through the thin walls of a wardrobe and stumbling upon more than one child corpse left to rot in an alley, well.Yata had abandoned that idea very quickly in favour of survival.-Or: the only reason Uchiha Yata is alive is because a luck of genes that had tipped her towards her father's colouring rather than her mother's and in a world of violence she's just another person playing a desperate game in a gamble for survival.





	1. Second Chances

The apartment is small, the walls murky, the bare necessities with a couch in front of a small square box television. There’s a mattress crowded up against the wall with piles of books and comics intermingling with bottles of cheap but strong alcohol. At the end of the bed are two boxes, one containing a single pair of folded jeans and two shirts and rolled up boxers beside two socks, the other a shirt and underwear still smelling strongly of sweat and musk.

There is a plate of food on the kitchen counter, a half-chewed square of pizza that has gone dusky with mould beside a glass of scotch, a burnt out candle in front of it, the bulb above flickering.

A single painting hangs on the wall – a drawing of a small girl and a boy with identical crayon brown hair holding hands beneath a rainbow. It had been torn up and later carefully mended with tape, framed and the only thing treated with any sort of care.

On the couch sits a figure, eerily still, head slumped back. Her hair short, eyes wide with surprise, as if caught off guard by the entry wound at the back of her head that had blown her forehead to bits, skin folded out in a splatter of death that has dried into furniture and ceilings.

It has been a week since the death of Jesse Bauer.

Outside the door life continues on as usual, undisturbed by the loss.

-

The first time Yata sees her (younger) little cousin of this world she’s seventeen and delivering a scroll on the behest of Orochimaru, face carefully blank even as her eyes flicks towards the boy with mild curiosity.

His mother and her mother had been siblings but Uchiha Koumi and her daughter had been excommunicated by the clan after her husband attempted to take the life of the then clan-head’s son in an attempt to place his child next in line.

The news about the Uchiha Clan massacre had reached their ears when Yata was ten and two days later her mother had tied rocks around her waist and drowned herself in an attempt to spare her child the same fate.

His eyes doesn’t much more than flick to her before turning away with clear dismissal – fourteen, maybe fifteen, that awkward gangliness of youth catching up to him. Not even old enough to have hit his secondary gender.

“I didn’t know you were in the business of entertaining children,” Yata comments idly as the pale snake-like man studies the eyes he’d pulled from the scroll she’d brought him, turning them back-and-fro with the kind of hunger that would send most scrambling away. “You don’t really have the temperament for it.”

She never would have spoken in such a way had Kabuto been near – the man got positively _stingy_ when one didn’t address Orochimaru with the _proper respect._

Yata sniffs, absently, trying to get a feel for his mood despite knowing that it was pretty much a no-go.

Orochimaru smells like Beta but it’s an off sort of scent, layered with something clinical and not quite human. No matter how many times she met up with him that sting of otherness never failed to put her on edge and whatever he felt there was never anything broadcasted in his scent.

“Is that a dig at my hospitality I hear?” Orochimaru flicks golden eyes up, slitted and dangerous but filled with a dark sort of humour.

If he was in a good enough mood to entertain her that meant he was happy with what she’d brought him which meant she’d be getting a good pay for it.

Orochimaru is many things but stingy with his money he was not - given the other part kept their agreement.

“It’s terribly rude to leave one _hanging_ to deal with business elsewhere,” she agrees and his mouth ticks up, amused by her gallows humour.

Their first meeting had been less than… pleasant. She’d been twelve, a gangly thin thing who’d taken a gamble on something far above her head for a scrap of cash and it had left her dangling inside his dungeons for nearly three months before she managed to wiggle some good-will out of him with a shot at keeping her life.

She had gotten what he asked her for. Narrowly. And they had come to something of a deal during the course of the years.

She doubted that good-will would last if he knew just what kind of genes lurked in her body.

Yata had inherited her father’s colouring – her hair greyish blue and her skin brown with an undertone of grey, almost ashen. She was the opposite of everything Uchiha was supposed to be.

Except her eyes.

Black, a solid sort of colour that didn’t reflect the light. A tell of the Sharingan had she been in Konoha and among her kin.

But to Orochimaru she was just Yata - just one of many urchin’s who’d been left in the end of the Third Shinobi War. Not of particular interest before she proved to be of use and that’s how she preferred it.

“I’m impressed you managed to get them,” Orochimaru says with appreciation as he tips them into a waiting jar, pale pupilless eyes swallowed up by green liquid. “Kumo would have paid you handsomely for these. They were once ready to risk war for even a chance of a peek at them.”

She watches him carefully, well-familiar with his volatile moods.

“And yet here I am.” She eases her shoulders, aiming for relaxation as she watches him through her lashes. “Have I not been faithful?”

A flicker of gold. A hum.

“Good enough to deserve a treat?” she pushes her luck with a waggle of eyebrows and some of the sharpness eases from him.

“Who did you take them from?” he asks, opening a drawer, a promising rattle of coins making her ears perk.

“Hyuuga Hina- something?” Yata shrugs, uninterested.

“Hinata?” It’s her cousin and Yata slants a look in his direction, finding a strange look in dark eyes looking at her. “Short purple hair, weak.” A pause. “The heiress of the Hyuuga clan?” 

“I thought the younger was the heiress,” Yata says, scratching two fingers against her cheek. “At least that’s what the guard rotation implied. But, yeah. You know her?”

“We were… classmates.” He sounds… Yata tilts her head, considering him before dismissing him, hand reaching up to snag a heavy bag as it registers on her senses, weighing it in her hand before tugging the strings open.

A peek inside reveals at least double of what she’d been promised.

“Good work gets rewarded,” Orochimaru says as she looks up, eyebrow raised. “The Hyuuga heiress… You’ve truly outdone yourself, _Yata_.” The sound of her name from his lips makes her just a tad uneasy but she hides it with a smile, raising the bag in a little toast.

“You know how to reach me.”

“Indeed,” Orochimaru agrees, eyes already back on the Hyuuga peepers, hunger spreading through his chakra.

Yata spares her cousin one last look and finds him looking at the jar with something unfathomable in his gaze.

Re-shouldering her bag she tips her head at the Sannin, receiving not as much as a hand raised in acknowledgement, before she disappeared as silently as she had arrived. 

As far as family meetings went it isn’t her worst one.

-

Yata downs the warm sake, humming at the taste and rising two fingers for a refill, keeping a careful eye on the bartender until the glass slides her way, topped nearly all the way to the brim.

She senses his chakra before she sees him, placing an elbow against the wood and resting her chin in the palm of her hand as he drops unceremoniously into the seat beside her, that thick black cloak with those strange red clouds covering him nearly all the way up to his nose with it’s high-collar before he loosens the top buttons.

The reek of Alpha is a familiar one, heady and intent, something irony and almost earthy.

“Kakuzu,” she greets with mild amusement at the grouchy tension in his chakra. “You look like you’re in quite the mood. Killed off another partner?”

“He booked a room at the second most expensive inn here.”

“Ah, a most heinous crime,” Yata agrees sagely. “He should have booked you down at the Yusaratori.” There were a total of three inns in the small village and Kakuzu was a stingy man.

A grunt in acknowledgement is her answer and she beckons the bartender under the sharp gaze of his strange eyes – green against a sclera of red, a warning edging into his chakra but none in his scent.

But she merely asks for a second glass and she tips half of hers into it and she feels the approval of it as he reaches for it and draws it towards him, his chakra easing down.

Kakuzu was a particular kind of shinobi but he was easy to understand, too, if one remembered to keep ones wits about. But like all SS-Rank shinobi he came with his own sort of danger so it was always a tipping point, a careful sort of balance and a constant risk.

But there’s little in her life that isn’t a risk – it’s just the way the world of shinobi works.

“I got your message,” Yata prods because Kakuzu isn’t particularly talkative in a good mood. “I know where at least three of them are – I’ve got a vague idea about the fourth but the fifth… I might have to cash in a pretty big favour for that one.”

He pulls at the cloth over his mouth, revealing the dark stitches stretching out from the corners of his mouth before raising the sake up, swallowing down half.

“The Akatsuki will owe you one,” Kakazu says finally and Yata pauses, sharpening upon him.

“That is quite the promise,” she presses carefully.

For a seventeen-year-old to have cultivated the sort of information network that she had might have been impressive. But she had almost thirty-two years of extra memories as a mercenary of sorts – hired to assist in all sorts of heists because of her information and networking. The workings of shinobi wasn’t much different and getting a footing with Orochimaru had allowed her to expand into something she was carefully proud of.

Thing was, Akatsuki was a name that had started popping up more and more as of recently and with SS-Rank such as Akasuna no Sasori and Kakuzu himself connected to it…

It was not a small thing to be promised in return. Even if her services were something of a niche trade.

Their eyes meet and there’s a warning in his eyes that she’s careful not to react to, eyebrow hitching up as she swallows down the last of the sake.

“I accept,” she says, swiping her thumb against the inside of the collar of her cloak, a scroll poofing into existence, caught and pocketed before she had time to even blink. “Give me two months and I’ll have the locations of the last two of them.”

“Six weeks.”

“Six weeks,” Yata agrees easily even as she winces internally because it lined up with her heat and while she had enough suppressants to slide by without drawing attention to it she wasn’t exactly looking forward to drag herself out of her nest to do business.

Kakuzu grunts, downing the last of his own sake before leaving to the visible relief of more than one patron of the bar.

Yata flags down the bartender and asks for his strongest whisky.

-

Yata doesn’t pretend to care much about why a group like the Akatsuki would be hunting down the jinchuuriki – she couldn’t see the reason being anything good and she was far too deep in it to give moral and ethics much thought when it meant her sure death.

Idealistically she might have taken a second chance of life and done something noncriminal with it but Kiri hadn’t exactly been serving up chances to thrive and between spending her first years of this life listening to the grunts of strangers fucking her mother through the thin walls of a wardrobe and stumbling upon more than one child corpse left to rot in an alley, well.

Yata had abandoned that idea very quickly in favour of survival.

Arguably dealing with SS-Rank shinobi on a daily basis wasn’t exactly good for her health and she had messy histories with most of her clients. Not to mention moments like _this_ courtesty of her doing her absolute best to stay alive only to make enemies of the kind that wasn’t good for her at all.

Yata looks at Yuuhi Kurenai and Sarutobi Asuma who’d tracked her down to ask for information about herself.

 _Konoha_ , Yata thinks with some exasperation, _always making everything so damn personal._

A part of her want to drawl out something cliché along the lines of _you must be truly desperate to come to me for help_ in true villain style but her reputation as an information broker didn’t exactly lend to that kind of charade.

Instead she’d clad non-descript with a hooded cloak and a blank mask, her sign as _Nanashi;_ No-Name.

She could count the ones who knew her first name on a single hand – Orochimaru and Kazuku being an unfortunate two of them. The list had been updated to include her little cousin, if the boy had bothered to remember, since Orochimaru had been _oh so kind_ to use her name around him.

Really, if he didn’t pay as well as he did, and the part where he would probably kill her if she didn’t do as he wished – well, she might have gone looking for work elsewhere.

The fourth was a bit more complicated – she wasn’t exactly sure _how_ the blond haired little brat had managed to wiggle it out of her but he’d been one charismatic little thing of some eight years of age and she’d been twelve going on thirteen at the time, a bit lonely after her visit in Orochimaru’s dungeons.

He was the other reason she preferred to stay out of Konoha – he had an uncanny eye for spotting her and she was really not interested in dealing with that.

Buy a brat ramen once…

Mentally sighing to herself Yata tilts her head and holds out her hand, watching with amusement as wariness shifted into their body language but the red-eyed woman slips a roll of money agreeably enough into the palm of her hand and Yata let it disappear into her robe with a brush of chakra against one of the many seals she’d stitched into it.

They wanted information on her which was a tricky thing in her business but she wasn’t about to let someone _actually_ interested in serving her up to these people get their paws on this request.

And money was always money – Kazuku had that one right. Suppressants was expensive and if she wanted to bail out of the shinobi lift sooner or later she needed to have _something_ to fall back on.

The information about the mission had been brief. Yuuhi Kurenai was looking for the person responsible for the person who’d caught and gouged the eyes out of her only female student before leaving her trussed up be found by a village patrol.

Yata had thought herself very generous for sparing the kid at all – living a life blind was a perfectly normal obstacle to overcome and there were plenty about living full healthy lives with spouses and children and the whole kit.

People had lost plenty more on the battlefield with less revenge-inclined teammates and teachers.

An obvious diversion would be the stupid thing to do and not exactly something she wanted to sully her reputation with but Yata had been given a chance to consider it carefully and she brushes her thumb over the seal in the middle of her palm and offers a scroll in trade.

It was truthful enough:

Person was known for working with Orochimaru.

Had also been spotted in the company of one of the Akatsuki on more than one occasion.

Former Kumo-shinobi.

Last one was a lie – but the colour of her skin lended to it and placing her at Mist would have begged more questions.

The nice thing was that the information, while true, also came with a warning because someone associated with both Orochimaru and the Akatsuki…?

Hopefully it would be enough for them to hesitate before going after her.

They bow their heads to her and Nanashi tips her glass in a cheery little toast as she watches them leave.

-

The thing about the whole Alpha, Beta, and Omega thing this world had going for it?

It wasn’t exactly something that had cropped up in her thirty-two-years of existence in her first world.

Some three months after turning sixteen it had quite literally toppled her over after a week of feeling vaguely feverish but she had lucked out to have been seen by a brothel worker who had hustled her inside and practically booted her into their basement to suffer it out on her own.

It had been vaguely hellish.

She thinks that maybe her mother might have stuck around to explain it if Uchiha Itachi hadn’t bothered to murder the entirety of his clan. The only other person she kept regular contact with since hitting twelve was Orochimaru and, by extension, Kabuto and they weren’t exactly the sort to set a poor street urchin down and teach her about the birds and the bees and _what to expect if you turn out to be an Omega._

It was still a bit of a hit or miss – even with the workers giving her a through explanation down to the very core of it all and religiously carrying around a large supply of suppressants.

The nesting thing was the only thing she could admit to reluctantly liking – it was something about placing everything just right and find calm in it that wasn’t exactly present outside her heats. She was normally too busy being wrapped up in things way above her head so she’d come to think of them as a sort of… mini-vacation.

The kind that left you aching and unfulfilled and completely miserable at the end of it.

She’s just at the beginnings of it, thankfully, when she gets a note in familiar hand-writing, half-curled in her nest, sweaty and completely nude, seals in place to make sure no-one could sense anything amiss outside her room.

She wasn’t ashamed of being an Omega and there was no real hierarchy around it in the shinobi world outside everyday assholes but Alpha and Omega tended to catch some flack for their ruts and heats since it wasn’t exactly handy for a shinobi to find themselves increasingly horny during missions.

Dragging herself out of her nest she takes a long shower before spraying herself down – making sure to get the glands at her neck and crotch where the reek got the heaviest before dressing in the clothes that had been left inside the bathroom where seals prevented the scent of her heat from sticking.

Done she breathes in deep and steps very deliberately into the crammed shower before disappearing to leave nothing but a small puddle of water to disappear down the drain.

“You’re not Kakuzu.”

Yata blinks up at the enormous shark-like man, knowing without asking what his name was.

Hoshigaki Kisame – one of the Seven Swordsmen of the Mist and, as of four years, a member of the Akatsuki. Dark blue hair, tipping almost seven feet, broad and terrifying with the infamous chakra eating sword on his back wrapped up and reeking with a sort of hunger that made her want to stroke a hand down its spikes.

Also, very obviously and _very_ pleasantly, Alpha.

He smelt like the ocean and the part of her that wanted desperately to be fucked really wants to flatten her tongue up his cheek and see if he promised to taste of it.

“You must be Yata,” Kisame drawls with a tick of his mouth and her eyes flicks to the rows of sharp teeth as she mentally adds a fifth to the list of the people who knew her name with some resignation.

And she couldn’t even be angry about it because Kakuzu the bastard had a perfectly valid reason for giving her real name rather than Nanashi since she never met up with him in the clothing she used for her information broker persona.

“Kakuzu busy?” she asks curiously, shifting to follow as he grabs the bottle of sake he’d ordered along with two glasses, a flare of appreciation settling in her gut as he slid into an empty boot and served them up a glass each.

She sits across him, taking a long swallow of the rice wine.

“He’s cleaning up after his last partner,” Kisame offer, which didn’t really tell her anything – Kakuzu was constantly cleaning up after his partners (or cleaning up his partners, depending on his mood). “So you’ve got me for the night instead.” A smile meant to put her at ease, a hint of teeth that made her clench down on nothing – so very thankful for her scent suppressants.

Shinobi like Kisame didn’t need them – they knew how to keep it under wrap as the best of them. But Yata was still figuring the whole thing out and relied heavily on the expensive things.

“I am ever delighted that Hoshigaki Kisame himself has graced me with his company,” she says, offering him a little toast before downing the last with a pleasant curl of warmth in her chest.

She feels the subtle flare of the privacy seal he brushes against the table – making them but a blur to the people outside the bubble, their voices muffled to near silence.

 _He could fuck us right here and right now and no-one would be the wiser,_ her heat-brain offers and that _really_ shouldn’t be sounding as sexy as it did.

Yata did not do public sex, no sire. 

“Business already?” Yata sighs a bit mournfully as he makes no move to refill her sake, making it clear she had to work for it. “Fine, fine. Kakuzu tell you what kind of information he wanted me to track down?”

“Two of the jinchuuriki.”

“Mm,” Yata agrees. “The eight-tailed one and the sixth tailed one. The Eight-Tail was pretty easy once I managed to get hold of a contact.” She swipes a seal on the outside of her cloak and nabs the scroll, rolling it out. “Turns out the Raikage been harbouring some secrets about his family – his own brother, Killer B, is the current host of the Eight-Tailed Ox.” She scratches two fingers against her cheek, rolling it up and offering it with a shrug. “He’s loud and out there which is why A hasn’t been able to keep it completely under wrap. He’s also in his thirties which means he’s _good_ and he actually seems to have some sort of control of his bijuu.”

Kisame accepts the scroll and refills her glass, her eyes brightening as she drew it towards her.

“And the Six-Tailed beast?”

“Harder,” she says with a slight grimace. “But – you might have heard of him, actually.” She draws another swipe down her front and a new scroll appears, rolled out with a flourish.

Kisame leans forward in interest, a brow hitching up. “That’s Harusame’s apprentice,” he says with some measure of surprise. “He died pretty recently – rumour has it his apprentice fell too.”

“Mm, his name is Utakata and him being the host of the Six-Tail is likely why he survived. From what my contact could tell me he’s turned into something of a nomad – wandering and keeping mostly to himself, avoiding villages and the like which is why he’s so hard to track down. I have an approximate location for him and a general direction of travel and it’s still fresh enough that I’m inclined to trust it.”  She taps it out and Kisame studies it for a long moment before leaning back.

Yata rolls the scroll together, sealing it up and holding it out in offering.

“It seems you’ve upheld your part of the contract,” Kisame agrees and it’s traded for a hefty sum of money to her internal glee as she pries it open before pocketing it.

To her surprise, and rising wariness, Kisame has made no move to leave yet – his eyes contemplative as he studies her, reclined and relaxed as he lifts his glass to his lips.

“You are allowed to leave,” the shark-like man says when he catches the slight curl of her shoulders. “But I, for one, am going to finish this bottle of sake.”

It’s an offer, an invitation in the pin-prick eyes that dip down and then up with a curl of his lips.

Yata knows better to take such an offer but she’s in heat and for all that her nest calls her a part of her _really_ doesn’t want to leave an Alpha like Kisame on his own after being offered to finish a drink with him.

 _Look,_ the traitorous part of her is practically wagging its tail, _he’s supplying for you._

He must have sensed her indecision because he leans forward and Yata watches the way his nose flares as he breathes in. “Look, I’m not usually one to make an offer but you reek of enough desperation that taking the edge off would probably do you well.”

Her hand slaps down on the scent gland on her neck.

“No one else can tell,” Kisame rumbles, a reassurance that comes surprising to her as he leans back, intent and heady with the smell of Alpha. “But my nose is sharper than most and the scent of Omega in heat is strong enough that I can’t help picking up on it.” His head tilts. “Quite daring of you to go up to an SS-Rank missing-nin in such a state. Not that you give away any tells."

Yata preens at the appreciation in his voice.

“Kakuzu doesn’t like being kept waiting,” she points out and when he raises the bottle in question she finds herself pushing her glass forward in invitation to a sharp grin.

-

Hoshigaki Kisame is a large man, broad strong enough to hoists the enormous sword on his back around with one hand.

She knew that.

Yata has no excuses for the noise that escapes her when he hoists her up as easily as if she was nothing more than a kitten, her legs spread and his hips slotting between them as he pushes her up against the closed door, mouth catching hers as she gasps, small and insignificant in comparison to him as she desperately pushes up, mouth opening to deepen it, unable to resist a swipe against shockingly sharp teeth.

He draws back and she flinches when his tongue drags over her scent glad, saliva dragging away the coating layer of the scent suppressant, a growl answering her spike of scent, a whine torn out of her as his mouth seals and sucks hard on her bonding gland as she claws against him, terrified to have him biting down and wanting it _so so badly._

She had never been bitten before – had only heard about it, the intense sharp shooting pleasure that was supposed to come with it and the lingering half-bond that would last during the duration of an Omega’s heat.

A full bond could not be made when the Omega wasn’t in a clear enough mind to agree to it, her saliva had stopped secreting the necessary hormone to replicate such a thing nearly a week before her heat hit, but it didn’t stop the instinctive want for him to claim her as he spread his scent around her, practically drowning her in something pure _Alpha_.

Kisame is warm and overwhelming, swallowing her up as he crowds her up against the door with a roll of his hips – hard and with some measure of control even as she gasps and squirms, the growing bulge in his pants mashing over her clit in a way that makes her cunt clench down despite the fabric between them as he repeats it, a rolling sort of grinding motion that had no business feeling as good as it did.

She reaches up to grasp at the back of his neck with a gasp torn out of her as she hitched her hips, heels digging into his back, moaning as he growled against her skin.

There’s a pounding of fear in her chest that tips over into an achy sort of need and exhilaration as he tears the fabric of her pants and underwear simply off her, shirt impatiently tugged up and over her head before he hoists her up higher, encouraging her legs over his shoulders, leaving her bare right in front of his mouth – a mouth filled with _very_ sharp teeth.

Her fingers sink into his short hair and her hips jerk at the first broad stroke of his tongue – long and thick where it dips into her folds, saliva left in the tufts of blue between her legs but he doesn’t seem to even notice, sucking and licking, teasing with the tip dipping against her entrance as her breath stutters and her hips rolls up towards him in encouragement, head tipped back against the wall and a breathless sort of need as she strains against him.

“Inside – please, I want your tongue inside of me-“ She tugs roughly at his hair and she can feel the way his smile stretches just before his tongue pushes into her, spreading her out to a gasp and a needy sort of whine as he delved deep into her, his tongue rough where it flattened up against her walls, dragging and tasting her wetness as her toes curled, his hands heavy and hard on her hips as he drags her impossibly closer, reacing nearly all the way up to her cervix as she lurches against him.

“Kisame-“ His nose presses up against her clit and she digs her nails into his scalp, edging _so close until-_

Kisame drags his thick tongue out of her to a jerk of her hips. _“No-!“_ she gasps out in protest but he was already drawing her off him, dropping her to the floor on her bare feet, panting and flushed with arousal, eyes lidded with heat fever, and he ignores her protests and tugs her forward catching her mouth in a hungry kiss with a hand that tilts her head to angle it deeper, his tongue wet with the taste of her which makes her groan.

His other hand find hers, guiding them encouragingly to his pants as her walls keeps clenching down on nothing, that hard edge leaving a strange sort of wiry sensitivity, wetness lubricating generously between her legs as she fought not to rub her thighs together.

She pulls him open, dragging them down to reveal the large bulge of his tenting boxers, eyes widening at the sheer size of him and a delicious sort of shiver runs through her as she rubs against it before dipping her hand down the hem of them, palm gliding down over a cock girthy enough that she couldn’t get her hand around it, following it down a length that promised to do impossible things to her.

“Backing out?” Kisame breathes against her ear, bent down to give it a sharp nip, tongue stroking up over it, and her grip on him tightens – his hips rocking forward in encouragement.

Yata doesn’t answer, herding him back until he sinks willingly into the couch of the room, legs spread wide, and she sinks to her knees between them, worming up and flattening her tongue to drag it up and over the fabric of his boxers, following the clear outline of his cock to a small grunt to approval.

She mouths against the wet fabric, breath warm and hot against him as she maps him between her lips with a teasing drag of her tongue.

An impatient shift makes her reach up and grasp the hem of his boxers, his hips rising to allow her to pull them down enough to free his erection, head jerking back as it flopped up against her cheek – hard and long and thick enough that it promised her jaw a good ache. There’s a thick pulsing vein on the underside of it – the erection a pale greyish sort of blue, bulging almost purple with the expanding blood inside of it.

Yata swipes her tongue over the mushroomy head to catch the bead of pre-cum glistening there before pushing down firmer against his thighs with her arms and angling down to drag against his balls, mouth opening carefully to suck them in, the tip of her tongue lapping against the underside of them.

A hand finds and fists tight in her hair, dragging her off and up, angling her mouth down against the head of his cock as she opens her mouth wide, straining to fit around it as he tugs her down a bit impatiently, giving her no choice as he sunk deeper and deeper into her wet mouth, her tongue flattening up against the underside of it, offering further lubrication with her saliva when he shoved no sign of stopping.

The feel of his cock curving down her throat makes her gag around him, unable to draw air, but grasping patiently at his thighs as he pushes the last few inches in, her nose burying into the pubic hair at the root of his cock, breathing in the musky scent there.

 _Alpha,_ a part of her whimpers, nostrils flaring to take in more of him.

A small tug and he allowed her to draw back, just enough to expand her lunges with new air, before he was pushing her back down again, his hips pushing up as he pressed her down, making sure he was as deep inside of her as was physically possible as he groans, her tongue rubbing against him as she struggled not to choke.

Kisame trades his grip on her hair for hands cradling either side of her face, thumbs brushing against the tears that form unbidden as she gags, quivering as he works her up and over his erection, her jaw strained and aching and air cut off for long moments of time as he simple holds her in place, hunger in his gaze as he watches her.

“I’m impressed,” Kisame murmurs as he pushes her down hard, her throat forced wide around the broad head of his cock. “Such a good little Omega.” His hips pushes up and her throat tightens around him as she swallows convulsively to an appreciative noise, quivering at the praise, at the knowledge that she was doing her Alpha _proud._

Her cunt clenches down and Yata tightens her grip on him, a whine at the knowledge that he could simply twist her neck and she’d be unable to do anything to protect against it.

The next time he guides her down she pushed roughly forward, curling her back and humming around him as she clings to him to a curse and an involuntary rise of his hips as she practically vibrates around him.

“Fuck-“ he says with some appreciation. “Do that again,”

If Yata’s lips weren’t spread so wide that she could feel her saliva dripping out and down his erection she might have purred.

Instead she repeats it, stroking wet and warm against his erection, lapping against the stretched skin, flushed and gagging, jaw aching around the girthy stretch of it.

She can’t stop the whimper from escaping her when he drags her off him, hauling her up and over the spread of his thighs, knees sinking down on either side of his hips and mouth catching hers eagerly, feeling his erection pushing up far too high on her belly as she struggles against the subspace she was threatening to fall under.

 _Bad,_ her mind blares and Yata pushes up, threading their tongues together to a rough nip and she jerks in his lap, trying to rise up, to sink down on him, but his hands wraps around her ribcage, spanning firm and tipping her back into an arch, his mouth sealing over her nipple and sucking hungrily as she grasps desperately at his wrists.

A breathy gasp escapes her as he drew back with a breath of cool air, his tongue flattening to drag up against her sternum and all the way up her throat which tilted back in submission to a rough growl as his grip tightened.

He hoists her up and Yata sinks deeper into subspace as her nest envelopes her, a purr low in her chest.

A broad palm strokes over her forehead and hair, bed dipping as he put a knee to it, leaning down to nuzzle against her in response to the noise, his mouth tipping with amusement and appreciation as he looks at her.

“First heat with an Alpha, huh?” he murmurs. “And a missing-nin to boot.” He drags his shirt up and over his head, getting rid of his boots and finally his pants and underwear before nudging her back and deeper into the nest, following her, watching keenly the way her body shifts in response to his cues, desperate to stay in his good-will.

 _Touch-starved,_ Kisame mentally notes as her legs falls open in invitation at the first touch of his palm against her knee, eyes dark with arousal and so deep into subspace that he knew it would be cruel to leave her without offering at least a cuddle in aftercare.

Omega didn’t fall this hard this fast if they were naturally trustful and open – the more issues the deeper they tended to tumble under once they got into bed with another. 

 _Kakuzu sure knows how to pick them,_ Kisame thinks with amusement as he leans down and drags his tongue down the inside of her thigh, unable to resist a taste.

Yata jerks, her mind heavy and so painfully aroused that she doesn’t know what to do with herself as she looks at the missing-nin she’d invited into her nest, a tremble running through her as his tongue dips down to stroke over her cunt, whining and twitching up to chase the feeling.

“Hands and knees,” her Alpha rumbles and Yata hurries to roll over, large palms steadying her hips as she pushes up, the position slotting so _right_ inside of her that a part of her never wants to leave it, wants to stay this way forever, head dipping down, sweaty and wet and so very _desperate_ as a hand runs appreciatively down her flank.

 _“Alpha-“_ she gasps, pleading, and he growls, hand grasping and kneading her rump, tongue running up against her spine, a nip of teeth making her jerk.

“Do you want me inside of you?” her Alpha rumbles. “Want me to fill you up? To _breed_ you?”

Yata’s mind blanks, head dangling low, instincts screaming _wantwantwant._

 _“Please-“_ she sobs and the feel of the large head of his cock pushing up against her makes her hips raise high, knuckles white where she grasps the fabric of the covers below, whining because he was _too big_ but Yata wants him anyway, muscles knotting tense, breathing hard as she felt herself being spread, a low noise in her chest as the head disappeared into her, her cunt sealing tight around the large blue erection.

She doesn’t dare to clench down, aware of the way he watches himself spread her obscenely, her body tiny in comparison to his own.

“Look at you,” he breathes. “Such a _good_ Omega.” His mouth spreads knowingly when she clenches down with a jerk and a whimper of immediate regret, his palms settling and grasping her fimly as he rolled his hips forward, preventing her from do much more than twitch as forced her to take him deeper. “I bet you can take all of me – you’d like that, wouldn’t you? To feel me pushed all the way up to your _womb._ ”

 _“Alpha-“_ It’s a desperate and depraved sort of sob and Kisame groans as he thrust forward, burying impossibly deeper, neatly all the way to the root, feeling the way she ripples and clenches as he forces her to take him all the way down, dragging her hips back until her rump settles against his crotch, body freezing up at the feeling, the head of his cock pushed up against her cervix.

Kisame growls and hitches forward, grinding hard into her depth.

“I’m going to _wreck you_ little Omega,” he promises her.

He begins pulling back, dragging nearly all the way out before pushing roughly forward, watching in fascination as the entirety of his cock disappeared into her in a way that was nothing short of criminal, her body jerking as a _smack_ ran out through the small room.

The room reeks of heat, Omega and Alpha pheromones mixing into a delicious heady mix that made Kisame growl low as dragged himself out and thrust forward again, her body jerking with the force of it, her breathing loud and shallow beneath him as he give her time to get used to the way she felt when he dragged out, the way her insides scraped raw when they spread around him as he pushed back inside.

It’s firm and hard and slow, torturous where she kneels on her hands and legs like an animal in heat, feeling the way he slowly and achingly speeds up, the head of his cock smacking hard against her cervix over and over again as he takes her with little regard for her own pleasure.

She can feel her own arousal running thick and hard through her as pain and pleasure twists inside of her and she forgets to be anxious, forgets to be afraid, forgets to think – her mind locked on the large Alpha behind her, the promise to being _bred,_ the feel of him as he groans, fingers digging bruises into her hips as he thrusts forward with sudden brutality, practically bending over her as he sets a firm and hard pace that makes her legs spread, taking him deeper as he fucks her, his palm settling heavy over her breasts, palming them roughly.

Yata feels her back coil, her toes curling and she jerks, clenching down hard as she comes with a sudden keen, Kisame buried deep and groaning wet and warm into her ear as she rippled and clenched around him, dragging him deeper as he growled and leant forward, mouthing against her bonding gland as she struggled to find her breath.

And then Kisame draws his cock out only to push forward and Yata twitches as he drags against oversensitive nerves, a whine of protest soothed with a nuzzle after he’d rolled her over to her back, dark black eyes blown with omega heat meeting pin-pricks of black pupils filled with hunger as he draws up to look at her.

“You want to be bred, don’t you?” he rumbles. “To be filled and claimed.”

He pushes forward experimentally and her hips hitches up, taking him deeper with a gasp and Kisame’s mouth spreads in a sharp grin as he grasps at already bruised hips and thrust forward, not bothering to take it slow, taking her rough and hard as her legs wrapped around his waist, heels digging into his lower back and arching up against him as he fucked her, his scent sharpening with intent as the knot at the base of his cock began to swell.

“I bet you can take it,” he breathes as it snags at her entrance, popping out painfully and swelling to push insistently up against her as he thrusts forward, hard enough to let her feel it without actually letting it slip into her. “You’ve never been knotted before – I know you’ll love it,” he murmurs. “It’ll make you feel _good_ ,” he promises, tongue dragging up over a hard nipple.

Yata looks at the way he’s already swollen up outside of her, feels the way her walls clings tight to his cock that has her spread so _wide._

 _ **“Yes-“** _she gasps and Kisame’s scent flares with triumph as he grasps her hips painfully and begins hammering up against her until he drags her back, his strength giving her body no choice but to open around the large knot at the base, crying out as she spread wide, the head of his cock pushing up against her cervix and her nails sinking into his broad shoulders, eyes flaring open as the knot expanded further inside of her, mouth opening in a wretched sort of keen as warmth exploded into her, a sticky sort of heat that made her dig her heels harder into his rump to a curse of surprise as she rolled up against him.

She can feel her heart thumping wildly inside her chest as he slowly eased down against her, arms slipping around her and holding her tight as he carefully rolled them to the side, the hard peak of the heat scent eased into something slow and languish now that it had been soothed by Alpha pheromones.

“I should send Kakuzu a thank you card,” Kisame murmurs against her hair as Yata slowly becomes aware of her faculties – at the spread of the knot inside of her, the fact that she was locked tight to an SS-Rank Alpha for at least another twenty minutes settling alongside the ache of her jaw and the painful spread of him inside of her. "Been years since I had the chance to indulge in something so sweet."

The part of her that is pure Omega eases down as his palm spreads large and soothing against the back of her neck, drowning out everything around her as she closed her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, casually sliding ya'll this fic: sup, dudes
> 
> I have, admittedly, not settled all the pairings for this yet but those tagged are a sure thing that will happen and I will probably add to them depending on how the plot develop?
> 
> Got any in particular you want to see? Let me know! It might happen, it might not but I am always open to give it some consideration :)
> 
> This is very self-indulgent. I admit it. I've always liked the Akatsuki and there are so many fun characters in the Naruto universe.  
> \+ Yata has been begging to be written for months now so here we are!
> 
> I hang about tumblr as artsy-death if you want to come scream at me~
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	2. Responsibilities

Yata stares blankly up at the ceiling.

She’s naked and aching – satisfied in a way that’s entirely unfamiliar in association with her heats.

The room reeks of a mix of Omega and Alpha pheromones, so thick that she knew she’d have to scrub the walls unless she wanted it to linger for months afterwards.

There’s an unfamiliar sort of softness inside of her – a lull of her instincts that she knew she couldn’t allow to remain but feeling strangely… _safe_ … right here, right now, surrounded by the scent of _her_ Alpha-

“He’s not my Alpha,” she reminds the Omega part of her that is giving a vague impression of a cat in a spot of sunshine, all lazy and relaxed.

The brothel workers had told her that sharing a heat with another was supposed to be different. Alpha, Beta or another Omega – they all had the capacity to influence an Omega in heat in different ways.

It had sounded like a lie. The kind men told about painful blue balls in an attempt to get laid.

There’s a bottle of water and a plate of rice balls under a plastic wrap at the bedtable along with a half-fancy sake bottle in clay with the kanji curving elegantly against its brown surface. There’s no note – she hadn’t expected one – and in all honestly this is far more than she’d expect from _anyone._

Let alone an SS-Rank missing-nin.

That she was dumb enough to invite to her bed.

Yata slowly pushes up, wincing at the ache between her legs, feeling her walls clenching down on nothing and recalling the way he’d licked her clean of his semen with a brush of red to her cheeks.

There's no risk of pregnancy – she knew it, he knew it, the small mark by her hipbone was an invention of the Sannin Tsunade, it tied to the chakra of the one who placed it and also eradicated the risk of sexually transmitted diseases.

Shinobi inventiveness – it was a clever sort of thing and made encounters like far easier to happen.

The floor is cold beneath her feet and she shivers as she crosses the distance to the bathroom, leaving the door open behind her and reaching into turn the water on – letting it run as she looks at herself in the mirror.

Pupils still blown in the aftermath of heat, her throat and shoulders marked generously, her scent gland sucked nearly black. She touches her fingers to it and immediately yanks her hand away – catching herself on the sink as her legs threatened to fold beneath her, clenching down on nothing with a gasp.

 _Shit,_ Yata thinks with some fascination as her brain recalibrates itself _. Sensitive._

She prods it a bit gingerly with a glow of green chakra but it’s never been her forte and at most she eases it into a dark mottled purple instead of bluish black before giving up, aware of the growing arousal between her legs.

Her hair is flattened and oily from sweat, the short blue-grey strands curling out strangely in places.

The rising steam makes her refocus her attention on the shower and she takes a ginger step into it, wincing and then groaning as warmth swallowed her up, beating against her bonding gland as she flattened her palm against the wall with chakra, her right dipping down to grind hard over her clit with her palm as her arousal spiked sharp and hard through her.

It takes her embarrassingly short time to come, fingers curling up to stroke against sensitive walls as she clenches down.

She breathes out and reaches for the scentless soap she’d left inside – scrubbing herself down three times and getting off one more time before stumbling out and wrapping herself up in the large cosy towel waiting for her, sinking down on the toilet seat.

Yata finds that, despite the risk of it, she doesn’t regret it.

The feeling of him swelling inside of her to lock against her – that was _new_ and she’d liked it. Knotted and helpless against him, soothed down from the hard edge the heat wired up inside of her...

It wasn’t something she’d repeat anytime soon but having the memory of it was sure to make many great evenings less lonely.

 _You were lucky,_ she thinks to herself inside the small hotel bathroom. _You could be dead._

-

Kakuzu must have been happy with her because five weeks later a small origami flowers blossoms in place on her nose and she folds it open to find a particular kind of note heavy with his chakra signature.

It was an old kind traditional mark of a trade of favours – not really popular in these days and time but still unmistakeable. He was basically giving her the OK to showcase it to any of the Akatsuki members and cash in a favour from it – _within reason,_ it seemed to say as it pulsed pleasantly in her hand.

She knew Kakuzu was old but this was the kind of thing she’d never had known about if Orochimaru didn’t favour it as well and the pale snake-man had to be _at least_ in his fifties.

 _As if you have room to talk,_ her mind snarks.

In a two weeks, on the tenth of October, this body would be hitting eighteen and in combination of the thirty-two years from her first life she’d technically be hitting the big five-o.

“I should do something fun,” she sounds the idea out to herself, loosely relaxed against a large rock, a small fire crackling merrily in front of her, a fish slowly and idly being fried, two more waiting to follow beside her. “Isn’t there a festival or something somewhere?” she murmurs, squinting thoughtfully into the night.

-

 _Of course it had to be Konoha,_ Yata thinks as she slips into the male yukata, bindings tight in place over her chest, the blue fabric with dragonflies upon it settling prettily against the brown of her skin and the dark hair of her wig.

The Kyuubi festival was a renowned thing and she’d heard about it before but since she usually kept away from Konoha it wasn’t something she’d ever fancied a stop at.

She hadn’t even fully entertained it until she learned about the _masks._

The carnival mask on her bed is a cheap thing – painted yellow with slitted eyeholes and pointy ears curled just a bit forward at the top of it with triangles of dark paint, marks of black enhancing features and a crooked sort of smile that promised mischief painted nearly all the way from ear to ear.

It had been gifted to her by her mother when she was six after the woman had been away from Mist for nearly two months. It was the only gift she could remember receiving and she had gone through far too much trouble to keep it with her during the years.

A memento for the woman who’d drowned herself so that she could live, Yata supposes.

Make-up has been artfully applied to her face and neck to discourage any association with her as _Yata_ \- not that she was planning on removing her mask but she always erred on the cautious.

Extravagance was the theme of the night and the orange over her eyelids would be bright and eyecatching even through the holes of the mask - drawing attention from her eyes - and she'd painted her lips blue.

The festival has been in full-swing since the morning hours and it’s nearing eight which Yata takes as her cue to finally put her mask on, securing it with chakra before slipping out of the room, door closing soft behind her.

-

The Kyuubi festival is a peculiar thing, Yata decides, mask pushed up just enough to allow her to bite down the squid _takoyaki_ with a hum of delight at the taste.

It was rare that she allowed herself to splurge on food but Yata figured that turning fifty was the kind of thing that needed to be celebrated and she’d already worked herself half-way through the sake bottle Kisame had left behind after her last heat.

All around her are games and food, tales of those lost, heroes celebrated, a theatre put up further down the street with a large crowd around it, watching the re-enactment of the great Yondaime Hokage sacrificing his life to protect his people from the great and monstrous Kyuubi.

There was more than one pair of tears being shed in celebration and despite that the mood is high and spirited.

From what Yata understood of the jinchuuriki she suspected the Yondaime had simply sealed the beast at the cost of his life, likely in a babe since they had the best potential to adapt growing chakra coils for the influx of demonic chakra.

It had been some fifteen years since then and she didn’t envy the kid that would soon have the Akatsuki hunting them down. Considering that the Kyuubi jinchuuriki hadn’t been among those Kakuzu wanted her to hunt down, well.

That meant they already knew.

Yata flips the pin into a nearby pin after dragging off the last takoyaki ball, pulling her mask down in place as she chews.

Around her are people with and without masks, lively colours spiralling about their shoulders and some with their faces painted somethibg that was popular among the younger, she notes a bit absently.

At the stroke of midnight the Godaime Hokage herself would make a speech from her balcony which was the most anticipated moment of the festival.

It was all very Konoha-esq.

Yata’s eyes pauses to rest on purple haired teen, a supreme feeling of awkwardness overcoming her as she watches her walk arm-in-arm with a wild haired boy and a white furred dog that looked like it had grown a lot in a small span of time from the strange long-limbedness of its legs. The boy was stiff-backed and clearly protective, lips pulling back to reveal fangs when some of the civilians stared a bit too long.

Another boy buzzes strangely beside them – all of them clad traditionally if a bit quirky with the high-necked collar of the Aburame’s yukata and the dark sunglasses. The other was unmistakeably Inuzuka – she had done some mild research of them a few months ago so she recognised them well enough as members of the same team.

Which meant…

Yata glances carefully through the throng of people – finding a woman just a bit _too_ intent on the trio.

They were really doing the girl a disservice, Yata notes with a bit of annoyance. Loosing ones sight wasn’t the end of the world and hovering about her the way they did when it had been _months_ since she stole those pretty eyes for Orochimaru…?

She didn’t stop being a kunoichi because she couldn’t _see._

Yata had personally almost been mauled by a man half-deaf and completely blind when she was fifteen – it was the kind of thing one didn’t forget when forced to spend three days pursued by _scent._

She still had the scars from it – she’d really lucked out by rolling over a cliff but she’d also landed on a stalagmite that had pierced her shoulder clean through and left her like a meat for roast.

It had been an… uncomfortable situation to get out of.

Yata nudges her mask up, grasping for the sake bottle hanging from her belt and takes a long drink.

-

“What’s a cute thing like yourself doing all on your lonesome?” Yata asks, deliberately softening her tone and scent into something non-threatening.

She’d taken the time to scrub at her scent gland, just enough to tip the other to the fact that they were both Omega, and she watches the small button nose flare, lilac tied around her head to hide the fact that she didn’t have eyes to look out at the world.

“I’m- I’m waiting for my team.” It’s a voice that’s surprisingly soft when it isn’t screaming and Yata hums, watching idly as the girl shifts to discreetly cover the mouth of her mug to prevent anything from being slipped into it.

 _Clever girl,_ Yata thinks – aware of the gaze practically burning into her back but ignoring it.

The girl’s two teammates had left to fetch food, leaving her on her lonesome on a bench a bit away from the crowd under the distant but watchful eyes of their sensei.

“You mind if I keep you company for a bit?” Yata asks, watching surprise flash over her face. “I needed a bit of a break from the crowd.” She aim’s for sheepishness, hand rising to rub at the back of her neck in an echo of the blond bother she occasionally happened upon, watching the younger girl tip into a shy nod.

“I don’t mind,” the girl says, fingers stroking over the rim of the cup. “It- it can be a lot.”

“I’m not much for these kinds of things but it’s my birthday so I figured why not do something fun for it, you know?” Yata says, mostly to keep the conversation going.

“Oh- happy birthday!” the girl says perking up slightly. “It’s Naruto-kun’s birthday, too…” she adds, almost absently and Yata watches the way her face softens with some disbelief.

“You know that blond loud-mouth?” slips out of her and the other jerks almost guiltily. “He’s a charismatic little thing for all that he doesn’t hesitate to be heard,” she adds because the girl looked ready to open her mouth and offer something in defence of him. “I’m Kazuya Shiho, by the way. You can just call me Shiho.”

“Hinata,” is offered after a brief moment of hesitation and Yata does not mention the lack of clan name.

Instead she hums. “Pretty name for a pretty girl.” Hinata flushes red all the way to the tip of her ears at that and Yata’s lips tips up, inexplicitly charmed by the obvious response, nose flaring to take in the soft smell of lavender.

For all that her body was eighteen her mind was too old to ever consider someone under the age of twenty but she admits she does feel some kind of responsibility for the girl – if only because her own survival had come at the cost of something vital to her.

“Your teammates are really taking their time, huh?” Yata points out after some twenty minutes of light conversation, turning around to glance pointedly behind her, noting the way the disguised jounin melts further in the crowd in the distance. “What they look like?”

Hinata pauses but after a moment gives a brief description, naming them as Shino and Kiba, fingers curling together in her lap.

Yata knew full-well that both had been held-up by her shadow clones and she hums in fake consideration.

“Want to go looking for them?” she asks, stretching her arms above her head with a delicious crack of her spine. “It’s only an hour left until midnight – no use wasting the last of the festival just sitting about.”

“I- I shouldn’t-“

“Why?” Yata asks bluntly.

“They’ll worry,” Hinata says, anxiousness curling through her scent.

“We’ll stick a note to the table and let them know you haven’t been kidnapped,” Yata says dismissively. “Why should you spend it wasting away here when you could be having fun? I passed by _at least_ three goldfish games on my way here,” Yata entices.

Hinata turns her head towards her, nose flaring, trying to spot a lie in her scent, but Yata is genuine in her offer and she makes no attempt at hiding it, lavender mixing pleasantly with her own woodsy scent.

And perhaps she’s tired of constantly being under watch because the girl reaches blindly for her with a small pale hand and Yata’s smile spreads as she grasps and pulls the girl to her feet.

-

Yata tugs and clasps but she never holds onto the other girl for more than a minute or two, distracting and talking to keep her from thinking, close but not crowding her between the different games.

The goldfish thing is a hit, chakra easy enough to tell in even creatures so small, and Hinata is deft enough with the little paper things – Yata catching the goldfish she threatens to send sailing with a laugh and an a companionable nudge as she tips it into the waiting bag, Hinata’s cheeks flushing deep red.

Yata is a stranger and social cues means Hinata doesn’t make an attempt to hook their arms together – hesitant in the beginning but soon keeping step with her, moving easily through the thick throngs of festivalgoers, a stick of dango each and a bottle of something that’s warm and bubbly and vaguely sweet shared between them.

Yata isn’t loud or talkative by nature but she finds that she likes making Hinata giggle and blush – motions exaggerated and a bit crass without verging on the vulgar.

Which is why her scent sours when she catches sight of the Inuzuka marching through the throng of people, Hinata reaching out to grasp at her arm in concern. “What is it?”

“Your teammate,” Yata admits with some reluctance. “I guess this cuts our time together short.”

“Oh.” To her surprise Hinata’s scent tings with genuine regret and then determination. “I had fun,” the younger tells her, the tips of her fingers poking together. “I’m – I’m glad I met you, Shiho-san.” The sentiment paints her cheeks soft pink and Yata finds herself reaching out, ruffling lilac hair in a motion old but rooted deep through her instincts even this many years later.

“Take care of yourself, Hinata- _chan_ ,” Yata tells her, slipping away and disappearing into the throng of people as the Inuzuka catches up to her with a firm hand grasping a pale wrist.

-

Yata pretends not to notice the jounin tracking her as she hoists herself up, ignoring chakra in favour of climbing the roof by hand to keep the impression of her civilian charade as she boosts herself up the last bit with a breath of relief as she settles and tilts her head towards the balcony of the Hokage tower.

She drags the sake bottle into her lap and nudges her mask up to take a drink before pulling it back down, burning chakra through her system to prevent the buzz of alcohol to cloud her senses even as she feigns a loose-limbed sort of relaxation.

 _Look how non-threatening I am,_ Yata thinks to the jounin watching her. _Just a curious civilian. You’ve seen my papers – I’m nothing more than a travelling author selling shitty romance novels._

Kazuya Shiho was a name associated with books as badly written as the _Icha Icha_ serie but without the porn. That it sold at all was a bit of a surprise to her but somehow the easy rom-com romances between the numerous forbidden romances between civilians and shinobi was the kind of temptation that was a hit among young teens and those forty and up, selling just enough to give her an excuse to travel between villages without drawing too much attention to it.

That she was something of a niche author with her female on female romance and poly relationships as well as writing about young people who didn’t conform to gender and expectations...

Well, it was the kind of thing that resonated with many and this world severely lacked written stories about.

Shinobi culture was pretty open with that kind of stuff but civilians still lived in strict hierarchy’s and to them her books were the kind that they shoved beneath their beds at night, heart beating twice the rhythm.

At least that’s the explanation her publisher had crooned about the last time she met the man.

She squints up at the Hokage tower when the doors open wide – bottle pausing as the woman stepped out, proud backed, coat flicking in an unseen wind, tugging at twin-tails of pale blonde hair.

A hush spreads through the people gathered below and Yata finds her back straightening without consciously being aware of it – drawn to the aura of the Godaime Hokage as she places both hands on the railing and gazes down upon them.

-

Yata doesn’t remain for long in Konoha.

She stops by the local bookstore and signs a pile of her books but doesn’t linger for small talk, packing everything up and shouldering the green backpack she wore for show over a pale yukata, traditional geta clacking against the ground.

According to her papers Kazuya Shiho had grown-up with a nobleman to a father who’d raised her on his own after the death of his wife, her background tying her to Iwa where her publicist had a friend who hadn’t hesitated to take on the role to cover her background for a good cash of money.

 _It serves to be through,_ Yata thinks to herself as she waves to the two gate guards and sets her path towards Suna.

-

Yata never makes it to Suna.

Kabuto’s smiling visage greets her half-way there and Yata’s own strains as she drops down from the tree to land some ten meters away from him, well-acquainted with how much he disliked her and the smount of trouble that could mean for her.

“Orochimaru-sama has a mission for you,” Kabuto says, eyes narrowed behind those round glasses of his, smile wide but lacking any sort of pleasantly. Even his scent is sour – twisting the pleasant Omega sweetness into something that makes her nose wrinkle.

“Is that so,” Yata says mildly, hands slipping into the pockets of her pants, rocking back on her heels. “And the normal letter he sent me would take too much time or…?”

“It’s a matter of some urgency,” Kabuto says simply. “Orochimaru-sama doesn’t have time to play your games.”

 _Games, he says,_ _as if I’m not always timely and through._

_Anything else would be suicide._

“What is it then?” Yata asks, deciding to ignore it completely, enjoying the way his eyes flashes when she doesn’t rise to the bait before he carefully hides it, a single finger poking his glasses in place at the bridge of his nose.

“There’s been some rumours about Sound going around lately and it has Iwa shinobi sniffing about our grounds,” Kabuto says finally. “Orochimaru-sama wishes for a… distraction.”

Yata stares at him when nothing more is forthcoming.

“What kind of rumours?”

Kabuto’s mouth flattens.

“I need to know what I need to throw them off from,” she presses a bit impatiently, pulsing her chakra to make sure there were no-one around to listen in. “There’s countless rumours about Sound out there, you’re not putting me up to a guessing game, I hope. Because that’s not going to bring results.” She gives him a flat fake smile.

Annoyance flares through his chakra even as his scent remains steady with dislike that he does nothing to hide from her.

“Orochimaru-sama’s apprentice has been… _testing his skills_ near Iwa,” Kabuto phrases delicately and Yata mentally translates that into _Uchiha Sasuke has been killing a lot of Iwa shinobi and it’s quite possible that they are angry about it but we do not want them to catch wind of Sound being in association with it._

Yata quite seriously entertains the notion of saying _no_ because it’s not her fault her little cousin is being an idiot and trying to throw off an entire village from turning angry stares in direction of Sound is quite positively beneath her skill-level.

But she’s also not keen of dying because of said cousin being an idiot.

“You’re paying me triple for this,” Yata tells him. “Because it’s going to get expensive.”

Kabuto gives her a fake smile and vanishes in a flutter of leaves and the rattle of a pouch filled with coins that she snatches up with a grimace.

-

Ethically this is the kind of work that makes even Yata a bit ill at ease but she grew up in Mist and she knows the mentality there and it only takes her a week to track down a possible candidate.

Unlike Konoha (following _the_ iryo-nin claiming seat as their Godaime Hokage) Mist didn’t particularly care about its shinobi after career-ending injuries and in the aftermath of the bloodline purges, the death of Momochi Zabuza, Hoshigaki Kisame becoming a missing-nin, their Yondaime Mizukage dead and their Godaime only recently elected – well, it wasn’t exactly a prospering village as of yet, that would take time.

Karatachi Yagura had given reason for the nickname Bloody Mist to Kirigakure and the aftermath of his reign was still deeply rooted into the streets despite Terumi Mei working tirelessly to counteract it.

Consequently Yata knocks on a door of a small apartment near but not door-to-door with the brothel she’d grown-up in, making sure to rattle her pocket when a tired and haggard face peers out at her.

-

Bribing a shinobi who’d been forced to end his career because of severe PTSD wasn’t exactly going to earn her a good place in the afterlife (if she ever got there).

The man would travel to Kiri, take responsibility for the killings and die before Iwa could haul him off to interrogation and his husband and son would be all safe and happy and out of Mist before the end of the week thanks to the coin she'd paid them. The End.

There’d been something very awkward about being thanked for it but at least Orochimaru would be happy with her.

Kirigakure hasn’t really changed a lot since she last visited its streets and it’s strange to realise that she feels nothing for the place she’d grown-up in. There’s a sort of dissonance to it – memories of a small wardrobe more clearly imprinted in her mind than anything else.

Yata stops by the bridge her mother had thrown herself from, pressing her palms together to say a brief prayer, and then stuffs her hands in her pockets and makes a second attempt to get to Suna, hopefully undisturbed this time.

-

 _Ah,_ Yata thinks some two days later, staring at a white-haired man and a loud-mouthed blond who’d pointed her out with eerie accuracy and wide surprised eyes where she’d been eating dango at a small café in a village tiny enough that it the only bar functioned as an inn on the single upper floor. _Of course it's you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaah, I have so many thoughts about the shinobi world.
> 
> The ethics of shinobi life, the ethics of indoctrinations and the life of a missing-nin contra village shinobi. I dunno, I find it interesting?
> 
> I mean, shinobi are hired for everything? And villages obviously do bad things - that's what we're taught with the treatment of jinchuuriki, thr Uchiha massacre and the Hyuuga bird-seal for example. And yet we weigh them as good as opposes to missing-nins being bad because we're supposed to feel empathy with our Heroes (and we do).
> 
> Say, what's the difference between ANBU and Akatsuki? Arguably loyalty from how we understand it. 
> 
> ^ ~~At least if we cut out Madara and whatever all of everything after that was because oh man that floating alien woman is not happening in this fic, no sire.~~
> 
> That's oversimplifying things, of course, but still I like contemplating what Akatsuki could have been had the plot not spiralled to make Bigger Badder Enemies.
> 
>   ~~Might keep Madara around. Should I? I like the duality of him and Tobi - it's fun.~~
> 
> Artsy-death on tumblr if you want to swing by :) comment field is open business for whatever is on your mind.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	3. Unwind

_How,_ Yata wonders despairingly as the blond bounces up to her with one of the Sannin at his heels, _is this my life?_

“Ah! I knew it was you!” Naruto croons loudly, drawing more than one pair of eyes in their direction, and Yata gives him a long suffering look.

“What are you doing here, brat?” she asks as she leans her chin into the palm of her hand, elbow against the small wooden table. “Out on a mission?”

He’s grown from the last time she’d seen him – taller, ganglier, around fifteen if she was to take a guess at it. His hair is longish in places and in need of a good trim, eyes ever the same brilliant blue and those whisker-like marks moving with the stretch of his smile.

The blond practically fluffs up with importance but a hand on his shoulder prevents him from speaking as the white haired man behind him leans down, a feigned nonchalance and interest in those eyes that dip down and over her body.

“Who’s this?” Jiraiya the Sannin asks. “A friend of yours? Yata – was it?”

Yata opens her mouth to respond, resigned to another knowing her name, but Naruto practically shoves himself between them – back to her and _this boy_ , Yata thinks as she stares at the stretch of orange fabric.

“Yata-nee is not for you to ogle, Ero-sennin!” Arms folding protectively. “I’ve known her for years. Yata-nee is the best! She always buys me ramen when she visits me, ‘ttbayo!” A bright grin is aimed over his shoulder at her and Yata shoves an entire ball of dango into her mouth, refusing to comment on it.

Jiraiya rubs at his chin but short of hauling the blond bodily out of his path there wasn’t much he could do.

Naruto was an exceptionally stubborn force of nature.

“We were just about to grab some lunch,” the man says finally. “Why don’t you join us?” It’s not really a request and Yata knows she’s screwed when Naruto perks up, eyes sparkling.

-

It’s mildly uncomfortable to be seated across a man whose old teammate she happened to have regular visits with and who was also Enemy Number One to his old village following the death of the Sandaime Hokage.

If she wasn’t already struggling enough with the fact that Orochimaru was, somehow, the closest person she had in her life she now had another Sannin looking just a tad too closely at her because she’d bought a blond loud-mouth some noodles nearly eight years ago.

For all that the situation is making her want to build a house in the middle of nowhere and never ever leave it ever again it _is_ morbidly curious to see another part of the infamous duo.

The Sannin: Jiraiya the Omega, Orochimaru the Beta and Tsunade the Alpha.

It wasn’t for little they had reached such fame and Yata was terribly aware of just how badly this could go for her.

She makes a mental note to send Kakuzu a bag of money - it wasn’t for him she wouldn’t have known that Jiraiya ran a spy network of his own. Something far more intricate than he had any business working with because Jiraiya, Kakuzu had said with a grudging sort of respect, ran a network much akin to his own: one focused and dealing with information of _delicate_ nature from people in _delicate_  positions to hear it.

Loosely translated: Jiraiya was always looking for enemies or potential harm against Konoha while Kakuzu did something similar to Akatsuki while always looking for opportunities to establish them firmer as a reliable mercenary firm of missing-nins, essentially.

At least that’s what Yata understood of it, mostly from rumours. Man wasn’t exactly chatty and she’d only met him by a note from Kabuto of all people with a flat sort of non-smile that had made her wonder if he was sending her to her death.

 _He doesn’t like to be kept waiting,_ Kabuto had said cryptically. The asshole.

Finding people and finding the _right_ people; that was Nanashi’s specialisation. On the side she ran the occasional retrieval business for Orochimaru because he paid good cash for her and she knew very well she had little choice in it even if they both pretended to have a mutual and understanding sort of partnership.

If Yata is honest with herself she wouldn’t have managed it on the scale she had if it wasn’t for Orochimaru since he’d taken the time to train her to the ground, mostly because he saw worth in the idea she had proposed to him in full after narrowly surviving his test for her after some three months in his dungeons.

It was also quite possible he found some amusement in watching her beat herself black and blue against one of his clones.

She hadn’t dared to charge him before she turned sixteen in this world and he had accepted it with a mild sort of amusement – leaving her very much with the feeling of akin to a puppy performing a neat trick.

Jiraiya dealt in information – he dealt in information of people with _possible harmful intentions against Konoha_ – if he didn’t keep tabs on Orochimaru she would chew off her own hand and he was quite possible the last person she wanted to have a _tête-a-tête_ with.

 _Did he know?_ Yata wonders but she doesn’t know and she’ll have to be very, very careful.

“Why don’t you order for us, Naruto,” Jiraiya suggests with amusement as the blond hemmed-and-hawed over the four options on the menu. “Get yourself one of each and a pork for me.”

“Miso,” Yata adds because if she was about to be interrogated he could damn well pay for it.

The blond gives him a squinty eyed look of suspicion but Jiraiya waves a bundle of money and the promise of free ramen is too much for Naruto who caves instantly, snatching it up.

“I’ll be right back, ‘ttbayo!” the blond promises her and Yata gives him a pained smile, watching him bounce up to the counter where he immediately draws a very stiff-mouthed old woman into conversation.

“So,” the Sannin drawls with his charge sufficiently distracted, “an old friend of the brat?”

 _Why,_ Yata wonders, taking a sip of the cider she’d brought along from the dango café, _are you this invested in a blond orphan kid with a too big mouth and a dead clan name plastered to him?_

The problem here was that Naruto knew her as _Yata_ , not Kazuya Shiho or even Nanashi, which meant that she didn’t have as legit an excuse for her travels because her existence as _Yata_ was supposed to be for moments of shinobi related business and evenings when even she could idle out of disguise.

 _Why,_ she thinks a bit lost as she looks into his dark brown eyes, _would Yata visit Konoha?_

“I bought him ramen a couple of years ago,” Yata says finally and truthfully. “During the years it’s become something of a tradition whenever I stop by Konoha.” Not quite truthful – Yata did not consider it _tradition_ , the kid was incredibly stubborn and his proficiency for picking her out of a crowd was eerie.

That was the only reason for it.

The man hums. “So where are you from if you’re not from Konoha?”

“Kaa-san was from Konoha,” Yata finds herself saying after just a brief moment of hesitation. “Tou-san was from Kirigakure.” _Lie,_ her mind whispers, her father had been just as much Konoha shinobi was his wife. “And that’s where I lived up until my uncle found me.” Somehow naming Orochimaru as an _uncle_ made her feel vaguely nauseous and she prayed the man never found out. “Nowadays I mostly do some travelling on my own, helping uncle with his business when I can.” She offers a shrug, giving him a sheepish smile.

“What’s your mother’s family’s name?” Jiraiya pushes with feigned lightness. “Maybe I’ve heard of them?”

“No offense, Jiraiya-san,” Yata says, rubbing at the back of her neck and averting her eyes. “But we just met.”

Brown eyes flashes but he doesn’t push because he knows just as well as she does that it wouldn’t look good for a shinobi in his fifties to keep pursue the subject by-all-evidence civilian girl of some eighteen years old with someone like Naruto close enough to see it and interfere.

Especially not in such a small village where shinobi-related affairs were viewed with fear and suspicion and where people had been giving them a wide-berth with narrowed eyes peering out from half-pulled curtains since seeing the hitai-ate on Naruto’s forehead.

Naruto returns with several bowls of ramen balanced in the hands of clones, grinning as he placed it down in front of her and dropped into the seat beside her as the clones followed, piling up all of it off until the table was covered with steaming bowls.

It’s strange how something eases inside of her when he nudges her shoulder and she gives him a nudge back – the brat.

-

“I’m making my way to Suna,” Yata tells Naruto some fifteen minutes later before she has time to think twice about it. “The – uh, new Kazekage is being – it’s a big thing,” she stumbles out, grimacing at herself because _really_.

Jiraiya is looking far too amused by her inability to shut up around the blond who is happily shoving noodles into his mouth.

 _Why don't you just draw him a map?_ Yata thinks sarcastically to herself.  _Spare them the trouble of looking for you at all._

“Really?” Naruto asks, all blue eyes and obliviousness.

For an extreme Hokage-wannabe he knew about zilch of what was going on around him. Yata has long since come to term with this even if she’s mildly amused he hasn’t gotten any better between eight and fifteen-ish.

“Yeah,” she agrees, dropping half an egg into her mouth and chewing it down. “He’s pretty young so there’s been a lot of rumours about it.” She eyes the blond. “You’re fifteen, right? He’s about the same.”

This makes him pause, noodles dangling out of his mouth, an owlish sort of look that turn complicated in as Yata watches him, not quite sure what to make of it.

“My age, huh?” Naruto says with surprising quietness and Yata shouldn’t care but she doesn’t like the way his smile sorta shrinks.   

“It’s unusual. I think the Yondaime is among the youngest before him? Twenty-ish?”

“Twenty-two,” Jiraiya corrects and Yata points her chopsticks at him in a _there you go_ gesture that makes Naruto’s lips twitch up.

-

Yata leaves with a widely grinning blond waving at her back, a pair of sharp brown eyes watching her back and a letter stuffed into her bag courtesy of a very insistent blond.

-

 _How the hell,_ Yata wonders some two weeks later as she’s watching the Kazekage inauguration, _does the blond know the new Kazekage well enough to send him a damn letter?_

_-_

Struck by the feeling of being rather over her head and promising herself to avoid Konoha for the foreseeable future Yata spends nearly three weeks lurking about Suna before _not_ delivering the letter but instead stumbling past someone who manages to distract her in a flutter of black and a red clouded cloak.

_Akatsuki?_

Yata stares after the dark cloak and not two seconds later a hand lands firmly on her shoulder with a squeeze that makes her still carefully, inhaling to smell of _ocean_ and-

Lips presses against her cheek and Yata jerks, fingers loosening to allow her to swivel around and look up at a face that stretches into a smirk that is nothing short of _cheeky._ “I thought I recognised you,” the shark-like man rumbles as he straightens out, completely ignoring her ruffled expression. “Fancy seeing you here.”

He’s got a curious sort of hat on him – wide and made of straw with a jingle of bells when he shifts and had he been in her first world that kind of ensemble would have drawn more than one pair of eyes. Here? It was nothing out of the ordinary and even helped him to not stand out quite as much seeing as he was a seven feet tall man with greyish blue skin and a mouth that looked ready to rip another’s throat out.

“You missed the Kazekage’s inauguration,” Yata says as she gets hold of her faculties, heart slowly calming even as caution settled through her, her smile automatically ticking up in greeting. “Didn’t think I’d be seeing you all the way out here. Suna isn’t really a must-visit place for most water users.”

“Most water users aren’t me,” Kisame says simply and Yata, who has always been sensitive to chakra, can’t really argue about that when he gives off the impression of a vast and enormous ocean where he pushes against her senses.

“Fair,” she agrees, trying to understand why he’d approached her but not quite willing to push her luck.

“Why don’t you join me and my partner for lunch,” Kisame suggests and Yata hesitates but – ultimately? She wants to stay on good ground with the Akatsuki and meeting more of them, informal and out of business, it has the chance to offer something good to her.

She already knew Kisame, was at least minutely sure the man wasn’t the kind to slaughter without cause or order, and she’d proved useful with the information exchanged during their last meeting.

It was possible that if his partner proved to be the sort to lash out than Kisame might even be inclined to prevent it and if she was to have more contact with the Akatsuki in the future this really was the best circumstances to meet one more of the members under.

“Sounds good,” Yata agrees, rolling her shoulders and Kisame’s mouth stretches further, his hand settling briefly on her shoulder to give her a small guiding nudge inside and into the dim restaurant.

And so it comes that Yata meets her (older) little cousin.

-

Of her cousin’s Yata shares more similarities with Itachi than with Sasuke – this is a sort of absent realisation made half-way through a very strange dinner.

The stress lines might not be as visible on her own face but they were certainly there and where Sasuke gave her an impression of a spiteful cat Itachi made her incredibly wary for all he also made her empathetic because there was an undercurrent of tiredness that felt all too familiar with the way it entwined through his chakra.

Their mother’s had been sisters and from the shared chin and nose Yata was inclined to believe Itachi took more after his mother than his father if Uchiha Mikoto had looked anything like Uchiha Koumi.

It wasn’t startling enough to give her pause and her light blue-grey hair compared to his dark ashy black and her brown skin weighed against his paleness was enough to throw off any speculation of _family_ but it’s still curious to see.

Itachi had been some two-years-old when her father tried to kill him and her mother had been some seven months pregnant when she reached Mist following that – excommunicated from her clan but pleaded for a chance to live by her sister, her name struck from all records and her child never registered.

_“You are an Uchiha,” the woman whispers into her ear like a mantra, hand stroking down short blue hair. “My beautiful Uchiha Yata.”_

Unlike Kisame his scent was nearly completely hidden – carefully curtailed and giving only a polite impression of a Beta, not even enough to allow her a chance to place the smell though it brought to mind something cold.

Yata’s own Omega scent had been covered up, as was her habit.

“Kakuzu tells me you do the occasional work for Orochimaru,” Kisame comments half-way through the dinner, trading the topic from politics to something more personal and Yata slots him a look, feeling that they might be nearing the reason for his invitation.

“I do,” Yata comments noncommittally. “Among many others.”

Kisame leans forward and from the corner of her eye Yata sees Itachi’s eyes turn towards her.

 “That’s not what Kakuzu says.”

“Kakuzu,” Yata says mildly, “needs to learn how to mind his own business.”

Kisame’s eyes gleam and then he laughs, easing back. “Relax,” he says and Yata forces her shoulders down, taking a large swallow of the fruity drink Suna favoured. “I’m merely curious if you’ve happened upon a dark haired kid alongside him.”

Yata goes from oh to _oh._

No one had quite been able to understand why, out of everyone in the clan Itachi had bothered to spare his little brother – leaving him traumatized in the aftermath of the massacre.

Whether it was for nefarious reasons or because he had some twisted sort of care for his younger brother Yata didn’t pretend to know or care because that would mean getting _involved_ and Yata quite preferred herself alive, as it was.

“Uchiha Sasuke?” She raises an eyebrow, flicking her eyes to her older little cousin. “Yeah, he’s still alive. Cute kid, if a bit grouchy.”

A moment ticks by, Kisame’s expression remaining mild, Itachi not looking at her and yet – the tension made the hairs at the back of her neck rise.

“He seems to be doing fine,” she hears herself saying, spreading her palms out. “He was lunging about when I met him and Orochimaru has been mindful in not drawing too much attention to him.” _Paid good money for it to_ , she does not say but lets the silence stretch just enough to let it be implied.

“Did you speak to him?” Itachi, Yata thinks, has a firm and low voice that draws attention in a strange way and she finds herself looking at him, dark eyes meeting an equally dark pair.

She finds herself wondering if he’d kill her if he knew the truth about her – there’d never been an explanation for the sudden massacre and for all that he was an SS-Rank shinobi there was also something very unassuming about him until he raised his head and drew attention to himself.

Not exactly the kind to just… go off one day, she thinks.

A slow blink lets her know that he’s surprised that she’s keeping his gaze.

“I have not,” she tells him. “And I don’t do favours. You want something you tell me and you’ll either pay me for it or do something in return depending on circumstances. That’s how I work.”

“Sounds reasonable.” Kisame picks up the conversation again, his partner watching her silently. “You contact one of us if you notice anything strange or suspicious Orochimaru is up to with the kid and we'll pay you extra for anything of interest.”

“You do me a favour in Suna and you’ll only have to pay the extra,” Yata offers. “I have a letter than needs to be delivered and I can’t get to them without drawing attention to myself.”

Kisame’s eyes sharpens but ultimately he leans back, deferring to the much younger man.

Which says a lot of interesting things about him, Yata decides, slanting him a look before turning to her little cousin with a raised brow.

“A favour for a favour,” Itachi agrees and Yata slips him the letter beneath the table with a flash of teeth.

-

“I need a vacation,” Yata tells Kakuzu some sixteen weeks later as she drops down into the waiting booth. “Long term, at least two weeks minimum.”

Kakuzu gives her a flat look and she flags the waitress down, ordering a glass of strawberry juice and a glass of water to a look that grows severely unimpressed before she shoves it down between her legs and spikes it with vodka, drains the water and splits it between them.

“Nabbed it from a twelve year old who fancied that just because he was ready to kill he was ready to drink,” she informs Kakuzu pleasantly. “He drank like a third of it before passing out in his own vomit and I stole the bottle and dumped him outside his parents’ house.”

“The juice is the cheapest thing on the menu,” Kakuzu says with some grudging approval, drawing the pinkish liquid closer, waiting for her to take a sip before switching their glasses and draining half.

“ _You_ look like you need a vacation,” Yata comments idly.

“I don’t do vacations.” Kakuzu looked rather ill at the thought, to be honest.

“Sex?”

This gets her another severely flat look and her mouth twitches.

“Just a suggestion,” she assures him. “I hear cuddling is supposed to be real nice as well if you’re not into the whole bumping bits thing.” She swings her legs idly before perking up. “You know, there’s a hot spring not far from here and we don’t have to do actual business _here._ ” She even does an eyebrow waggle, resisting the urge to scrub at her tired eyes.

Yata wonders if she should be concerned for her safety when Kakuzu drains the last of his glass and doesn’t even raise an argument about it as he abruptly rises – leaving her awkwardly staring after him for a good minute because she hadn’t thought he’d _actually_ agree to it.

She brings the glass with her and cradles it close, the feeling of being in way over her head encroaching like a large shadow at her heels as those strange eyes of his settles on her with impatience when she steps outside.

-

Yata is truthful in that it isn’t far away and she seats herself at the edge of the large pool of steamy water, the nipping November air slightly cool even this close to Iwa, leaving Kakuzu to secure the perimeters to his satisfaction while she sipped idly on her strawberry-vodka mix, careful not to linger on the knotted set of nerves in her belly.

 _First you have sex with an SS-Rank missing-nin,_ Yata thinks to herself, _and now you’re gearing up to bath with one._

And yet she can’t deny the part of her that’s just lethargic and really, really craving that hot water, overly happy and so very relieved that he’d actually taken her up on the offer because the prospect of working through the papers currently stuffed into her bag inside a dark and shoddy bar for several hours more–

Yata hadn’t been joking about the vacation.

There was something nearing – something big. All the signs pointed to it but she didn’t know _why_ and between Orochimaru and Akatsuki alone she’d been left strung out without any actual paus between things to the point that she’d spent the last three weeks catching cat naps between things.

Kakuzu hauling her in for an actual meeting was her first excuse to sit down properly for weeks now.

Yata can’t deny that she’s uneasy- Kakuzu is a terrifying man, she didn’t stand a chance against him if he decided to do anything.

But she hadn’t been standing a chance if he did anything on all the other numerous meetings they’d had and if Kakuzu wanted her dead then she’d be dead.

 _Do you trust him?_ Her mind wonders a bit morbidly.

Yata is pretty sure that what she feels for Kakuzu isn’t even remotely something like _trust_ but she was inclined to believe that he wouldn’t kill her without cause and he certainly wouldn’t be securing and leaving a faint trace of Alpha pheromones around the camp if he was just planning on ditching her corpse somewhere.

Yata stares blankly at the tree in front of her, painfully aware that she was overthinking everything, as usual, and painfully ready to just tip into the pool of hot water and be done with it.

Scrubbing an arm over her eyes she gave herself a mental shake, reaching and getting the heavy cloak off her shoulders, shirt and mesh following, leaving her only in her bindings as she started on her very sensible and not open-toed boots that all the shinobi here seemed to favour and was in the process of wiggling one foot free when Kakuzu stepped back into sight, not even giving her a cursory glance before he started on his own clothes.

Kakuzu sheds his clothes fast, revealing a body held together with thick black stitches down his arms, circular in places, crawling in others, dipping down by his crotch and around his knees.

On his back four animal masks stared out – sewn in place and giving a vague impression of _otherness._

He slips in quietly, his hair long beneath the headgear, pooling into the water.

Yata kicks her boxers off, dropping her bindings after them and shifts to slip into the warm water to instant gratification, her muscles aching with relief as she sunk nearly all the way to her nose, eyes lidding with complete and utter pleasure before closing completely, giving herself a moment to just get a feel for this body again as she breathed in the scent of minerals mixing with Kakuzu’s irony, almost earthy Alpha scent and then – slowly – her own Omega scent as the water cleared the suppressant from her skin.

She slumps back with a whoosh of breath, settling back on the rock-cropping.

 _I am never leaving,_ Yata thinks a bit hazily.

“You’re an Omega.”

“Mm,” Yata agrees with a tiredness she struggles against as she straightens out, cracking her neck and swiping grit from her eyes. “And you’re an Alpha. Secondary gender established. Hooray.” She gets a thumb out of the water and his eyes slants to it, unamused. “So, how do you want to do this?”

Kakuzu’s face tightens briefly. “Tomorrow,” he bites out.

Yata stares at him, wondering vaguely if she was tired enough that she’d started hallucinating.

“How much alcohol do you have left?” Kakuzu presses.

-

More than enough it turns out some two hours later as she’s slumped against Kakuzu’s shoulder, sleeping soundly on the man, cheeks red and skin pruny, little puffs of breath leaving her mouth.

Kakuzu’s got his head tipped back against the rock, aware of the soft push of her breasts against his side as her chest rose and expanded with her breathing.

He’d pushed down his own scent, allowing hers to fill up the small clearing, something sharp and crisp curling with ash and smoke, contrasting and suiting her dualities.

To fall asleep on an SS-Rank missing-nin, nude and oozing content Omega pheromones…

Kakuzu hums and draws her just a bit closer as he gazes up at the wide and bright full moon above them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where-in Yata is up her ears in it and she catches a much needed break in surprising company.
> 
> Thank you so much for your comments!!<3 I love getting feedback, makes me wanna go pirouette in the yard and then bunk myself down to roll up my sleeves just a bit more and just get to it. What a dream it must be to just have endless of hours to write and read.
> 
> I'll get back and answer them tomorrow because I swear the sun is rising outside and I dare not look at the clock. 
> 
> I'm having fun writing this A/B/O universe translated through a very dense MC who is working with pre-conceived notions from her own world and whose most stable contact is Orochimaru and Kabuto (and, growingly, Kakuzu) which we'll get back to a lot more. 
> 
> Comment field is open business, I'm hanging about tumblr as artsy-death and this has been chapter 3 of Criminals and Dreamers.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


	4. Discoveries

Kakuzu offers absolutely no explanation as to why she wakes up in one of his shirts, a long-sleeved thing that smells rather heavily of Alpha, her hair standing up muzzily from her long nap inside a bedroll that was very much not hers.

There was an uncommon kindness in his actions that his eyes warned her to comment on and she scratches two fingers against her chin, decides that she doesn’t care enough to press it and murmurs a _thank you for not letting me drown_ that gets her a flat look and a thin herbal-ish soup shoved into her hands which makes her taste buds sad for all that it leaves her feeling rather clear headed and energetic.

It’s the second time she’s fallen asleep on one of the SS-Rank missing-nin in black cloaks with red clouds and woken up alive.

Yata isn’t quite sure what to do with this new and strange pattern and she folds down opposite him, poking some of her favourite herbal mixture down into the pot of water he had boiling over the fire and gets a low hum of approval as the scent of lavender and oat fills the clearing.

“Right,” she says with some determination, deciding to just ignore everything and go with it as usual. “Back to business.”

-

She doesn’t give him the shirt back (Kakuzu never asks for it).

-

Yata stares at the bodiless Konoha shinobi and the headless Konoha shinobi stares back.

Brown hair brushing his cheekbones, dark bandana tied in a small cute knot at the front and, for some reason, a senbon sticking out of the earth close enough that if he didn’t tilt his head back his nose would be pushing up against it.

There’s another one with short scruffy brown hair and a lightning-like spread of a scar from ear to nose slumped back against a tree, his clothing charred and his leg twisted and clotted thick with dark blood.

Three Iwa-shinobi lie dead in the clearing, all jounin.

Yata very deliberately turns on her heel.

“No- hey, hey wait- let’s not be hasty here!” The verbal vomit of words makes her pause despite herself, turning to look at him with the orange eyes she wore with her Nanashi-mask to discourage any unfortunate associations.

Nanashi was an information broken – no-one thought or looked twice at even the most blatant and glaring genjutsus and she habitually shifted shape and stature and gender inside her cloak, the mask her only real tell. It was, after all, expected.

“Look- look, I recognise you,” the man fumbles. “Money for a favour, right?”

 _Information,_ she twists in Konoha sign and his eyes dilate, fixating on it for a brief moment before shaking it off. “I’ll pay extra,” he wiggles and Yata’s nose flares, catching the desperation weaving through the scent of Beta. “You help me out and back to Konoha- no, wait!”

Yata stops with some exaggeration, eyes shifting to look at him over her shoulder.

“There’s- there’s an outpost two hours away from here,” the man gets out. “I’ll vouch for you, no-one will touch you and I’ll pay you double- triple!” His scent flares as she looks away from him and Yata stares into the forest, exasperation at herself settling thick inside of her because _triple._

 _You faint and I’m dumping your body,_ Yata informs him as she turns back, orange eyes digging sharp into brown.

The other practically wilts with relief. “That’s fine – that’s more than fine, actually. Names Genma.”

 _N-A-N-A-S-H-I_ she spells out and then gives him the sign for it as she crouches down, her palms flattening against the ground and chakra rippling down to get a sense for his condition.

“I guess it’s not that odd for an information broker to be fluid in Konoha sign, huh?” Genma says and judging by the pinpricks of his eyes he has a concussion, one leg broken, the other foot crushed in a way that made her grimace in sympathy behind her mask. “My partner – he hit the tree pretty hard. Do you know any first-aid?”

Yata shakes her head before she grasps him by the scruff of his vest and shoves three fingers into his face.

 _Three, two, one-_ Yata yanks him hard up as he flares his chakra in a clumsy barrier to keep from scraping his skin raw and she settles him down on his rump, legs dangling into the hole, and out of his earthly prison she can smell the sour scent of frantic panic sticking to his sweaty shirt.

He must have been there for a good while, she decides a bit absently.

She leaves him there, studying his partner carefully and eventually jerking his shirt up and flattening her palm against his skin to get a sense for whether she needed to be careful of his spine or not, ignoring the spike of worry behind her.

It was one of the few tricks she'd picked up from Kabuto in a trade of personal favours that had gone unmentioned to Orochimaru.

Concussion plus worry for his partner made for a bad attempt at masking his scent and she had to appreciate his priority as he shifted to get a better sense for what she was doing – apparently giving her the benefit of the doubt.

Not that he had much choice.

Yata straightens, glancing from one shinobi to the next, smacking down on a seal on the back of her shoulder and sealing her bag away with a little _whoosh._

From another seal she pulls a thick line of rope.

-

“This is humiliating,” Genma informs her.

Money or not Yata wasn’t about to just leave an adult shinobi free access to her throat.

Instead she had bound a much exasperated shinobi with his arms flat against his sides before looping rope in place to secure him onto her back, squishing him up against her shoulder, head awkwardly turned.

His partner had suffered something of the same but hoisted awkwardly close to her chest, scent gland practically shoved into her face and leg wrapped thick in one of her shirts since neither had any clean clothes to spare.

His own dangled from her, leg wrapped in thick white bandages and tied tight, the foot free from its sandal but otherwise dangling like a sad bruised and malformed piece of meat.

 _You’re lucky you have the most proficient medical-nin in all of the Elemental Countries looking after you,_ Yata thinks as she trots onwards, travelling by trees quickly ruled out. _Back in my first world that would have been a clear case for amputation._

At least if you didn’t have a good insurance, good money and access to a good doctor.

Most the people she had known hadn’t exactly had either of the three and she’d once witnessed a woman saw her swollen, pus-soaked arm off after getting high and drunk enough that she was laughing half-way through it before sobbing through the last until one of the patrons of the bar had taken pity and twisted the last bit off, the sound of splintering bone running through her mind to this day.

Capitalism at its finest.

“To think I’m actually relieved that you’re not taking me to Konoha,” Genma continues and from the way he reeks of worry she suspects it’s mostly for his own sake in a forced attempt to keep himself awake. “Anko would never let me live it down if she saw me like this. None of them would. I’d be a laughing stock for months to come.”

Yata does nothing to hinder or encourage him, her arms free thanks to her jerry-rigging and kunai tucked into the sleeve of both arms, secured with chakra in case she needed to rid of the two in haste.

They wouldn’t thank her for it but she also didn’t know if the Iwa-shinobi came with more than the three already dead. It wasn’t unusual for ambush teams to keep extra behind, especially inside enemy territory and this close to Konoha.

“You know, I didn’t hear about you until pretty recently,” Genma continues, struggling to turn his head but with a wheeze gets his chin up on her shoulder. “Asuma said you cautioned Kurenai from following someone associated with Orochimaru. Real decent of you.”

 _Yes,_ Yata echoes to herself, _real decent. I could have killed them but instead I gambled and I won and my reputation remains unsullied. Can’t have clients disappear out of nowhere, if I can help it._

The small note from Kakuzu was a reassurance these days and she was at least reasonably sure she might be able to weasel some sort of protection from Orochimaru in a trade of favours that was likely to put her life on the line.

“It’s pretty unusual for missing-nin like yourself.” Genma’s voice is faintly slurring, Yata notes, and she frowns as she quickens her pace just a bit.

No getting paid if he was dead and it would be better to dump his body if he passed out or risk his comrades making hasty decisions. “Not to say all missing-nin are bad, you know? But – it must be pretty lonely without a village.” He sounds sad all of a sudden, his scent souring to give the impression of a kicked puppy.

Of all the secondary genders Yata found that Beta usually were the most expressive when it came to their scents.

Perhaps it was because Omega and Alphas hit heats and ruts respectively and had the ability to influence by scent in ways that Beta necessarily didn’t and thus naturally reigned them back in everyday life.

Perhaps it was just an inherent Beta way of being- Yata couldn’t say for sure because she wasn’t Beta and she had never stopped to ask a Beta what it was like being one.

What she did know is that’s hard not to react to it when it practically whimpered at her for attention, her nose flaring beneath the mask. “’s not lonely,” she says, deepening her voice into something not quite male and not quite female, a rasp that was clearly not her real voice.

Genma hardly seemed to notice, his eyes on his partner again. “You sure he’s alright?”

“He’s breathing,” Yata grumps. “You better have the money promised.”

“I do,” Genma presses immediately, his scent shifting fast enough to give her a headache as determination flared up “I won- I won all of it. I have it.” It sounds as much as a reassurance to himself as to her. “I thought we were going to die.” He shifts, mouth warm against her bonding gland this time and she nearly trips during her next step as he gives a sad little sigh of warm breath against it. “They came out of nowhere, you know?” Genma bemoans and Yata really can’t help notice how soft his lips are. “If it wasn’t for Raidou- are you alright?”

Yata has about three seconds to realise that her head had, against her will, tipped _just so_ with a little shudder and she swallows a whine.

“I’m fine,” she forces out after clearing her throat. “How much further?”

Genma apparently decides to take her words at face value because he hums and _fuck_ Yata thinks with a guilty little jerk because not only was his companion knotted tied and bleeding against her front, completely unconscious, but Genma clearly wasn’t in his right mind either and she had absolutely no excuse for her body’s response.

The man squints into the forest ahead of them. “Twenty minutes?” he decides a bit dubiously after a long moment and Yata is suddenly very, very thankful for her mask because she’s not quite sure what kind of expression she’s making beneath it.

-

Yata is quite ready to dump them and be done with it and if it wasn’t for the money she would have done it a good while back – breathing out in audibly relief when two Konoha shinobi practically dropped out from the sky.

“Noooo,” Genma moans against her bonding gland and she only just resists smacking him as she twitches. “Not you Anko.”

For all that the purple haired woman looks like the sort to butcher her first and ask questions later her eyes had gone wide and then mirthful at the sight of Yata’s jerry-rigged carrying system, a snort of laughter escaping her as the large and muscled man beside her let out a vaguely resigned sort of sigh.

“Oh this is hilarious,” Anko croons in a dark sort of delight. “What a sight – what I would do for a picture. I’d frame it for all to see.”

Genma’s scent turns resigned, Yata’s nose twitching.

 _Favour for a favour,_ Yata signs carefully. _Letting them down._

She doesn’t move until she gets a sharp nod in return and she wiggles one kunai out, snapping the ropes holding Raidou first and Anko steps forward, hands clearly visible as she carefully relives him off her and steps back with the wounded out of her reach while keeping an open and unassuming body-language that might have fooled someone who didn’t keep contact with Orochimaru and knew exactly what kind of danger she meant.

He’s relegated to another shinobi that drops from the trees without comment and Yata is careful not to react. There’s at least three more that she can tell, all carefully keeping an eye on her.

“I- promised money,” Genma grumbles as Anko steps forward to help him off as well considering both his feet were pretty much useless and it’s a bit of careful shifting to get him from one back to another, Anko hoisting him up to a grumble, her mouth twitching. “Payment for help.”

“I’ll handle it,” the large man in the heavy trench coat says and something about him tickles familiar at her memories.

“Yeah,” Anko agrees. “And I’ll take care of you little Gen-chan.”

“I’ll bite you,” Genma offers and Anko snorts.

“You should have offered it to your saviour,” the purple haired woman leers. “How long were you all snuggled up against them, breathing and humming against their bonding gland, _hm?_ ”

Yata very carefully forces herself not to react to the taunting words, purple meeting orange with appreciation and amusement as Genma blinks at her from the woman’s shoulder.

“Go,” the large man steps in before Anko can open her mouth to say something more. “Take care of his foot before it turn black and fall off.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Anko agrees. “See ya Broker-chan!”

“Bye bye,” Genma echoes and Yata stares after them as they vanish into the foliage for but a moment before shifting her attention to the clearly more dangerous man, heavy and scarred, eyes intent upon her.

“I thought you dealt in information only, _Nanashi_.”

Yata tilts her head. _Money is money,_ she signs. _Even I make exceptions when the price is right._

He doesn’t comment on her use of Konoha sign, had likely expected it. _I know who you are,_ he’d basically told her. _I know who to go looking for if you’ve done something to my comrades._

“What happened?” the man presses and something about him lets her know that it would be foolish not to answer.

 _Iwa shinobi,_ she signs. _Three of them._ And then shrugs because that’s all she knew.

“Can you mark it out on a map?”

A nod and he slowly pulls out a scroll, turning it around for her to see that it was clearly unmarked before throwing it over. She rolls it open, notices that it was a map centralized on the immediate area and mentally re-traces her step as she snatches the charcoal pen out of the air and makes a small x before rolling it all together and passing it back.

The other unrolls it, giving it a quick study before passing it to yet another shinobi that drops from the foliage, barely touching down before vanishing from sight.

“You have my gratitude for making an exception,” the man says finally, inclining his head. “How much did he promise you?”

Yata does not relax but her mouth twitches up behind her mask.

-

Genma promises her triple the money she usually makes for an easy information trade and the man pays her twice that.

 _Not a bad sum for a small dose of good karma,_ Yata thinks to herself with some pleasure as she flags down the bartender and orders herself the closest thing this world has to offer to a dry martini, a slice or lemon replacing the olive as she gives the woman a little toast.

-

“Your heat is nearing.” Yata very heroically does not trip over nothing at the blunt words from the pale Beta, her eyes fixating on the pale slim figure of Orochimaru who didn’t as much glance up at her.

He’s in full mad-scientist mode – glasses on his nose and white lab coat drifting about his ankles, hair pulled back into a pony-tail and standing in front of a naked body floating in a gelatinous blue liquid for reasons Yata is very sure she wants to know nothing about.

It had long been her method of dealing with clients with interests outside that commonly accepted. What she didn’t know she had no moral reason to interfere with. Everyone had weird hobbies – it was just part of life, really.

“Uh,” Yata says very eloquently. “I – yeah, a month or so,” she squeezes out, only just resisting the urge to sniff herself because _how._

She’d made very sure not to be anywhere near Orochimaru during her heats – she had no idea how the man had pegged her down despite that. Had she said something? Done something that tipped him off?

Maybe he really _was_ part snake? Could he just… scent it on her?

Mildly paranoid she takes a step back, pretending to shift and look at his bookcase instead, hands clasping behind her back.

“I called you back here,” Orochimaru says. “Because Sasuke-kun has been very much on edge the last few days. It is likely he’ll have his first heat before the end of the week.”

Yata gives him a mute look of confusion.

“That’s… good?” Yata ventures, flummoxed. “You, uh, want me to talk to him?” she asks, scratching two fingers against her chin.

“If you’d be so kind,” Orochimaru says with a smile that isn’t really a smile as he looks over his shoulder at her. “I’m afraid Kabuto wouldn’t be the, ah,  _right choice,_ for this.”

 _Ah,_ she thinks, in full agreement, and then: _how, exactly, am I the right choice for this?_

She does not voice this out loud.

“I’ll – go have that chat with him then,” she says slowly.

“You do that,” Orochimaru agrees and Yata makes a weird sort of twitchy wave at him before turning and trotting off, shaking her head as she did.

-

Yata knocks three times before kicking the door open, ducking the kunai that comes flying and giving her (younger) little cousin a mildly reproachful look, eyebrow hitching up when she got a good look at him.

Orochimaru wasn’t kidding – the heat was practically upon her cousin. His shirt and pants had both been discarded, leaving him only in his boxers, skin red where he’d scratched at it in an attempt to soothe the itch beneath his skin. Flushed, arms wrapped tight over his chest and curled into a ball with his knees tucked up to leave his back bare, jaw tight and teeth gritted in a fury she wasn’t quite sure what to make of.

The room was heavy with a smell that wasn’t quite Omega or Beta or Alpha but his signs were nearly identical to the ones she’d suffered through before she’d quite abruptly tipped into hers.

He smelt rather like ozone, sharp and electric on her tongue, and then that itching smell that would unfurl to mark him clearly for what he was ticking at the back of her sinuses as she breathed in.

“Leave!” he hissed at her, fury in the black of his eyes.

“You know, it’s not the end of the world,” she tells him idly. “It’s a bit inconvenient but once you get the nesting down it can be pretty nice.”

His nose flares, trying to get a whiff of her smell no-doubt, but there were only three who could tell her by scent and that’s how she was planning on keeping it.

“Nothing,” Sasuke grits out, “about this is _nice._ ”

“That’s because you’re currently doing what I was doing in the beginning. It might seem strange and a bit silly but I promise you that shoving up your pillows and blankets in just the right way will make all of this pretty bearable.”

Sasuke gives her a look foul enough that she suspected he might actually try to bite her if she got close enough.

“I’m not a child,” he grits out.

“You’re an Omega,” Yata says. “And you’ll be an Omega for the rest of your life.”

Sasuke snarls and Yata grasps his arm as he uncoils and lunges for her, kicking out and twisting to seat herself firmly on his back, arm twisted behind his back as she pushes him belly down with her weight.

His skin is warm beneath her touch, sweat beading on his skin and he snarls wordlessly beneath her.

“I thought you said you weren’t a child,” she says mildly.

“Fuck you,” Sasuke growls.

If he’d been anyone other than her little cousin she probably would have left him but there’s a surge of _something_ inside of her and she bends down and seals her teeth over his neck, not unlike a mother cat grasping at an unruly kit, and bites down _hard._

Sasuke goes bone limp beneath her, eyes flaring open in shock as he sucked in a gasped breath with a noise he probably didn’t mean to make.

“What-“

“You’re like a prickly cactus,” Yata says as she releases him, rather pleased with herself as he remained still and unresistant below her, apparently struggling to the shock of his rather abrupt response. “I’ll show you a trick how to prevent someone from doing that to you against your will if you give nesting a chance,” she offers.

She would have shown him anyway – it was one of the first things the brothel workers had forced her after she came out of her first heat, after all. It could be soothing, they’d told her, and she had indeed responded to the way Kisame slid his palm steady and firm against her neck so she knew it wasn’t a lie.

But she’d been absolutely terrified the first time her body was stolen out of her control.

Secondary genders could be weird but only as weird as you allowed them to be, Yata had long decided. Nesting was good, denying it had only hurt and now she rather looked forward to them.

Sasuke’s eyes flicks red but it never takes, his scent sharpening and then mellowing. “Promise?” he pressed, something gritted and vulnerable in his eyes.

“Promise,” Yata assures him.

-

“So?” Tsunade asks as she visits him, feet and leg bandaged up and held high – promised a full recovery after three weeks on full rest. “Did you learn anything about them while you were tied up to them?"

Raidou was already up on his feet, albeit on crutches, and had been stolen away for a full mission report to Shikaku who oversaw all their missions as jounin commander. Having a group of Iwa shinobi this close to Konoha was worrying but it wasn’t the first time – shinobi villages were constantly pushing and prodding at each other, testing limits.

They hadn’t found out which village was responsible for the eyes stolen from the former Hyuuga heiress but Genma knew it’d be a high-price to pay for the one responsible. The Hyuuga clan might have been shockingly blasé about casting her from the clan but having their precious eyes in the hands of some unknown…?

There were more days that not that Genma found himself thankful that he’d been born outside clan politics. It always left him feeling rather cold.

If Genma is honest with himself they'd been lucky to cross paths with the information broker as they had, and that they'd actually accepted the deal he threw at them a bit desperately.

“Of course, Godaime-sama.” The senbon clicks against his teeth as he smiles. “Omega,” he says with surety. “And female. She had a rather odd scent – smoky but twisting with something crisp like pines, maybe mint.” It had been slow work, breathing and humming and working to just get the edge of her scent blockers off enough for him to tell without alerting her to it.

It would have been easier if she hadn’t tied him up as she had but in the end he’d been successful just as Ibiki and Anko intercepted them.

“She’s not mute – she spoke although not in her own voice," he recalls a bit muzzily thanks to his concussion. 

"What do you make of her?" Tsunade asks finally when he gives a small shrug, unable to recall anything more of importance. "Do you think it's possible to recruit her?" 

"I couldn't say," Genma admits. "She definitely have a weakness for money and working such an extensive network on her own - that's sure to make some enemies. If she hasn't been in contact with Orochimaru or the Akatsuki yet it's only a matter of time and we'd better make her an offer quick if we want to have a chance of having her on our side before they make a counteroffer. They'd have to be really dumb to let her slip out of their grasp." 

Tsunade takes all of this in with a dip in her brow that smooths out with a huff of breath. “Good work. Take two weeks off once you’re out of the hospital, Shiranui.”

He gives her a two-fingered salute and a grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to clarify - there's absolutely no incest in this story whatsoever. Yata merely wanted to prove a point to Sasuke because she's rather pragmatic when it comes down to it and the faster he accepts and comes to terms with what he is the better for him. And not all in the A/B/O mechanisms has to be sexual, hence my mother cat and kitten comparison. I like to think it's a very impolite thing to do and probably punishable in certain villages but also something that happens since shinobi fight dirty which is why most Omega know how to cut those nerves off. 
> 
> Evolution and all that. 
> 
> Anyway, welcome to this chapter! Where things happen, Genma is a sneaky opportunist and Sasuke struggles with some new revelations in life. You do not want to know how much time I've spent considering secondary genders of the Konoha 12 and Akatsuki both. Walking my dog is at least good thinking time but gosh, so much to consider. 
> 
> Ultimately I decided that this made a lot of sense and I'm pretty happy with it.
> 
> And next chapter we hit some smexy stuff~
> 
> Which is, uh, either good or bad news depending on why you're reading this story, I guess? 
> 
> (Also: I told you all I wasn't done with all the pairings yet and as such - tadaa! We have a new addition to the tags and I am here for it).
> 
> Thank you for the absolutely awesome reviews <3 I could twirl ~~I did twirl~~.
> 
> I hang about tumblr as artsy-death is you want to come wave or lurk about and this has been chapter 4 of Criminals and Dreamers. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	5. Twice the Heat

The subject of family is a bit of an abstract thing to Yata.

She had one and it was complicated and messy and left her so twisted up that she didn’t know what to do with herself in the aftermath of it – abandoning everything and falling into crime before turning sixteen in an attempt to escape it all.

And then she died.

And she suddenly had a second family. Only, her father dies before she’s born because he gets greedy and her mother drowns herself to give her a chance to live and she’s ten and all she has left in an (older) little cousin who wants her dead and a (younger) little cousin in Konoha who she knows would mean death to approach.

They become not-important in her new life as she paves her way from the poverty of Mist to something she can call her own and she finds herself, once again, knee-deep in an endless loop of crime.

Yata is eighteen and just a couple of months earlier she gouged out the eyes of a teenage girl whose only crime was being born with the wrong sort of genes.

It echoes familiar in a way that Yata refuses to dwell on as she approaches her at the Kyuubi festival and smells the blooming softness of Omega on her.

Family is abstract but she’s aware of it – notes the similarities between herself and Itachi as she meets him and feels enough interest to spare a thought and then a second one for her (younger) little cousin as she pins him down on the floor and digs her teeth into his neck.

 _The world is a cruel place,_ Yata thinks as she closes the door behind her and trots off to find him some blankets and pillows as he worked over the chakra blocking technique she’d shown him, something miserable and aching but determined in his face as he pressed his palm against his neck.

_What is family but an empty sort of word in a world that seeks to use us._

-

The closer Yata gets to her heat the more she reluctantly admits to herself that having someone to spend it with had been _nice_ and while the prospect of nesting does have her absently browsing blankets and stroking her hand over soft shirts and pants at stalls she finds herself with a nagging sort of _what if._

Ultimately she knows she won’t send Kisame a letter because a chance encounter is not the same as _requesting_. Requesting implies reliance or maybe trust or maybe both and Yata is absolutely not about to just hand that to a missing-nin willy-nilly because he happened to be a good fuck.

It does leave her Omega brain a bit grumbly the closer her heat gets and she finds herself at a bar – one of the few places that allowed people and travellers without question no matter the village.

There was always at least one bar promising a good drink and, maybe, some good company.

Not that Yata was looking for company. Good or bad. But the scents were a comfort the days during her pre-heat, even heavily saturated with smoke and alcohol, and she’s half-slumped against the counter sipping some greenish thing that tasted faintly of pickles and which the bartender had sworn up and down was a _classic_ in Kumo.

It was, Yata admits to herself, quite nice – a bit salty and with a bit of tang, ice crisp and crunchy as she absently bit down on a piece.

She pauses with the drink half-tilted to her mouth to fish a new piece out when the bar falls into a sudden hush behind her, tongue curled into the alcohol with a piece if ice on her tongue when a figure settles into the seat beside her, fingers tapping against the counter as Yata slowly draws the ice into her mouth.

Bites down, crunch ringing loud through the hush, and finds herself staring into a pair of dark grey eyes.

Dark blond hair, Kumo vest over a dark shirt with a scale-like pattern disappearing below it, the smell of rust clinging just crisp enough to let her know that this woman had just come back from a mission that had left someone else very dead.

Yata knows this woman’s name because she’d handed it over to Kakuzu for a roll of good money that she’d treated herself to some sushi for before stowing it away.

 _Nii Yugito,_  the jinchuuriki of the Niibi, the two-tailed cat.

Yugito gives her another kind of consideration entirely, her eyes going from danger to something like interest, her nose flaring, and Yata finds herself wondering if the jinchuuriki had the ability to smell through her scent blockers because she has front-row seats to Yugito’s eyes dilating with hunger.

It’s hidden, traded for a grin just as the bartender slides a glass of something amber and smokey down the counter.  

“You’re something new,” the cat says to its toy and behind them the noise slowly picks up again, something that barely registers on her senses because Yugito-

Yugito…

 _Oh,_ Yata thinks as something liquid threads through the scent of the Omega in front of her, something beckoning, almost like a purr against her senses as her nose flares, drinking it in. _She’s in heat._

If Kisame’s smell had made her want to taste then Yugito’s scent made her want to push forward, to _rub and mark and claim._  

It compelled to something similar yet very different than Kisame's Alpha scent and it physically pains her to curb the purr that builds low in her chest in response, her pupils blown wide as she stares at the other.

It takes her an embarrassing long moment to realise the other had spoken at all, even longer to scramble for the exact wording, grin only growing on the other’s face.

“Y-yeah,” Yata gets out, forcing herself to steal a breath with her mouth in an attempt to lessen her response to the other and nearly whining because it didn’t help a single _bit._ “I’m – travelling,” she says slowly as she struggles against the want pounding like a physical ache through her. “Kumo is nice this time of year, you know?”

“Is that so?” Yugito is pure amusement now and Yata can’t even fault her.

 _But fuck,_ Yata thinks not with a little longing, _she smells so good._

“My name is Nii Yugito,” she says in a low tone that is hypnotic, Yata quite unable to look away from her eyes as she leans forward. “And I think we’re both dealing with a small problem with a quite clear solution, wouldn’t you say…?”

“Yata,” she blurts out, like an absolute dumbass.

Yugito’s grin in saccharine. _“Yata,”_ she purrs. “Why don’t you come back to my place, hmm?”

Yata doesn’t even answer.

Yugito puts her hand out and Yata puts her palm in it like a dog going _shake_.

-

Yugito’s bed is a large round thing with plenty of pillows and blankets ready to be pushed around and arranged for the perfect nest and the blonde laughs as she tugs her along, urging her to drop her own nest things among it, carefully retrieved from the hotel room she’d been preparing to spend it in.

“Come,” Yugito urges and Yata finds herself pulled up into the middle of it all, a bit overwhelmed as scents from people she didn’t know flared around her, soothed as Yugito brushed up against her, stroking her scent gland over her nose and down her chin in a reassurance that almost leaves her liquid and boneless in response to instincts she struggles to comprehend.

Yata has never built a nest with another Omega before but Yugito nudges her along, constantly touching her, stroking up against a bared stretch of skin on her midriff, hips and shoulders brushing together, pushing beneath her and stretching over her to best work around her and it takes everything she has to keep her wits about as her heat builds between her legs.

Yugito is the first one to get naked, languish as she arches her hips up, pants and underwear slipped off and pushed up in place in their nest, vest and shirt and bindings following until she was completely and unashamedly nude.

“You too,” she urges, palms pressing and sliding up against her skin to a shiver, bringing her shirt up along with it and over her head, bindings tugged off and she's nearly immediately urged down on her back, the other straddling her chest, nuzzling against her, stroking and rubbing her bonding gland against her chin bones and nose until Yata was nearly dizzy with her scent.

And then Yugito shifts, purring low in her throat as a tongue, rough and not unlike a cat’s, dragged over her own scent gland to a whimper as she tilted her head, baring it further to a harder, firmer repeat of the motion, purr building as more and more of her suppressants were scraped off until the scent of her own heat was entwining heavily with the other’s.

“Mmm,” Yugito rubs against it, languish in her appreciation. “That’s better. You smell so _good_.”

It’s strange to hear her own appreciation echoed back, hunger and want and a tongue that keeps lapping, keeps tasting, egging her scent up, palms pushing down on her upper arms to keep her from pushing her away as she squirms, the feeling edging strange, not unlike a mind-numbingly slow approaching orgasm.

“Yugito-“ she gasps, trying to duck down, away from the firm and pushing pressure, but Yugito only pins her down harder, purring louder, soothing and rough at the same time as she shifted, pushing a knee down between Yata’s still clothed legs and bringing it hard up against her to an arch and a noisy sort of gasped keen as she rolled up again, seeking that desperate edge only to have Yugito shift her leg away, mouth curling into a grin against her throat as a desperate noise left her.

“So pretty,” Yugito murmurs and Yata’s fingers curl into the bedding as her mouth seals over her gland, sucking is slow and firm as Yata squeezed her eyes shut, painfully aware of how wet she was, underwear sticky inside her pants, brown skin flushed with red down her chest and a low whine falling out of her mouth as Yugito’s leg pushed down to work up against her in the same rhythmic pulsing as her sucking as she strained beneath her, aching and desperate.

“Ah-“ Yata gasps, whining low as Yugito pushes down and _grinds_ against her, mashing her clit against the rough sticky fabric of her underwear, her hips twitching up, legs opening just a bit wider, eyes blown wide as she struggled with the realisation that she was tipping from pre-heat to full-blown heat faster than she ever had in her life.

She could smell in in her scent, that heady sort of cling to it that was rising in response to Yugito’s actions scent, confusion and want twining through as only to disappear as her back bent in a painful arch with a cry as Yugito abruptly pushed down and against her clit and _bit down on her bonding gland._

The world whitens strangely around her and Yata is aware of coming, is aware of the way her entire body bows even as Yugito pushes down, teeth digging down harder, firmer, her muscles locking up as she cries out, shocked and trying to jerk away, allowed to a body that shifts with her, pinning her down on her belly to a low soothing purr against her neck, sweat beading on her skin and gasping for breath as she slowly came down from it – a tongue lapping languishly against the new mark even as she twitched with each rough drag.

The scent of her own heat is so saturated in the room that for a moment Yata almost forgets that the other is an Omega as well – painfully overwhelmed, aware of being overwhelmed, not quite sure what had happened but quite willing to have it happen again as Yugito rubbed her scent into the strands of her hair, her hard nipples pressing up against her back.

“Wha-?“ Yata gets out eloquently and Yugito smiles against her skin.

“Most,” the woman says in a low rumbly sort of voice. “Don’t know just how good a heat shared with another Omega can be. People romance Alpha and Omega bonding but they never speak about Alpha and Alpha or Omega and Omega coupling. And Beta gets forgotten, dismissed in the fables of romance.”

Yugito shifts, straightening up, and Yata knows that she must have gone deeper than she was prepared to go in the abrupt shift from pre-heat to heat because all she feels, helpless and rather overwhelmed beneath the other Omega, is a deep desperate want for _more._

Palms settles and spreads over her back, thumbs pushing down on tense muscles and Yugito makes a low noise of discontent, reaching over, keeping one leg firmly on Yata’s back to make sure she stays in place as she yanks the drawer of the night stand out and grasps for a bottle of clear oil that smells faintly of something soft as she draws back, shifting to settle across the back of her thighs.

“Gonna take care of you,” Yugito promises in a low rumble as she grasps the cork between her teeth and yanks it out, pouring heavily onto her back as Yata struggles to settle logic and instinct inside of her mind only to groan low in her throat as warm palms presses down and she spreads it over her back, the lower part of Yugito's palm and thumb digging in firmly all the way up the back of Yata's neck where she tensed before relaxing as they shifted down again.

Yugito does this several time, a slow and languish sort of stroking motion as Yata slowly relaxes beneath her until she was offering her own purr, low and content in her chest as her eyes lidded with every push forward.

Then and only then does Yugito shift low on her back and start working firmly in circular, pressing motions that undoes knots she wasn’t even aware of having, her lower back slowly relaxing, becoming aware of aches and pains she didn’t know of in her shoulders and neck to a low whine that gets soothed as Yugito works up higher, rubbing over her shoulder blades with thumbs that follow the achy stress of the muscles along the sides of her spine.

 _“Sssh,”_ Yugito soothes in a low voice that calls to something deep inside of her. “I know it hurts but I’m gonna take care of you, I promise, kitten.”

 _Yes,_ something inside of her rasps with want and she pushes her forehead down into their nest, curling to bare her neck better, the chakra lowering from its protective barrier to a pleased rumble from the woman as she stroked her thumbs up and over tense muscles, rubbing in round circular motions as she works down and out on her shoulder blades, pressing down hard to really get the tension out of her until Yata is so boneless she can hardly do more than offer low groans of pleasure and low encouraging rumbles from deep in her chest.

Yugito works down her shoulders and upper arms and down her wrists, pressing down between her fingers and then working up them with firm pressure between her palms and fingers before gently putting them down on the bedding.

Yugito pushes up on her knees, urging Yata's hips up, hands dipping down to get her pants open and nudged down along with her underwear to her thighs before allowing her to settle back with a brush against her flank.

Yata hardly reacts when palms presses down over her buttocks, working and kneading them firmly, moving down and over the sides of her hips in little knots of tension that left a delicious sort of ache behind then Yugito was done with them.

Yata makes a low noise of discontent when Yugito slides off her and then moans low as thumbs presses down at the arch of her feet with a little tickle before grasping to get her pants and underwear completely off, discarded aside to a soft kiss against her ankle.

Yugito works the underside of her feet, hard against her heels and between her toes, up her calves and knees and thighs to brush teasingly closed to her folds but never touching, drawing back with sticky palms that urges her to shift onto her back without a single inch of protest left in her, Yugito settling back over her hips and leaning forward to catch her lips in an achingly sort kiss that Yata opens willingly to.

“So good for me,” Yugito murmurs against her lips as she draws back and Yata makes a low noise in response, Omega brain purring happy and content at the knowledge that she was _good_. “Do I take good care of you, kitten?”

 _“Yes,”_ Yata agrees and Yugito smiles, low and pleased as she dips down and strokes her tongue over the teeth mark over her gland to a little twitch before reaching for the jar of oil once again.

Yata watches with lidded eyes as Yugito pours the oil between her breasts, scent sharpening as she spread it out and over Yata’s chest, palming up and over hard nipples, kneading the flesh of her breasts firmly before gliding down, rump shifting lower, fingers dipping and sliding into Yata with an easy curve that made her hips lift from the bed with a little arch and a soft sigh, walls clenching down, urging Yugito deeper inside of her to a pleased rumble as the woman pressed into her harder, firmer, twisting to drag oily fingers along her wet walls.

Two fingers become three, the ache of the stretch heady as Yugito shifts, nudging Yata’s legs to open up and let her slide down between them, hand curling as she pushed forward, using the weight and force of her hips to spread Yata open wider as she rocked back and thrust forward, fingers curling up inside of her to a stretch that made her twitch as those long strong digits pushed deep inside of her.

It’s slow and firm, Yugito grinding down, eyes watching hungrily, drinking every noise, every gasp and low whine until Yata came with muscles clenching down hard and wet around the woman who stilled, buried deep inside of her, before slowly pulling out, raising and dragging her tongue over wet fingers as Yata watched with lidded eyes, a touch of red to the brown of her cheeks.

“Do you want to taste me, kitten?” Yugito purrs, shifting to flatten herself down against the smaller woman to a neck that tilts to bare in submission without thought, mouth sealing and sucking over the bonding gland as Yata groaned out a desperate _yes._ “Good,” Yugito murmurs, shifting and lifting to slide down with her knees on either side of the other Omega’s face, carding strands of greyish blue aside to make sure none got caught.

 _“Good,”_ she repeats in a low rumble as she sinks down against the other’s mouth, fingers grasping the short hair as a tongue dragged broad and hungry over her folds as she slowly lowered down, a quiver running through her, thumb brushing against the younger’s forehead as she allowed herself to settle more of her weight on her.

“Such a good kitten,” Yugito murmurs with a little gasp as an tongue strained up and into her with a little wiggle, curling to lap against her walls to taste more of her as Yugito sunk down with a languish groan, hardly able to believe how lucky she’d been with this one as she rocked idly forward, Omega instincts soothed into a soft lull as she worked herself off against an eager mouth, smearing herself against the younger’s chin and nose.

Her little kitten would be reeking of her for _days,_ so firmly marked that no-one would be able to deny just who’d claimed her, just who’d marked her, just who’d _fucked her_ so deliciously through her heat.

She’d really been everything Nii could have asked for – so responsive, touch-starved and desperate to be taken care of, calling to all of her instincts to take and ease and hide her away for the duration of their heats.

It had been so _easy_ to tip her from pre-heat to full blown heat, she’d gone so willingly that Yugito hadn’t been able to resist the last push, that little _edge_ that came with a small harmless little _bite_.

None of them created the hormone in their saliva that would make anything of it but feeling the indentions beneath her tongue and knowing how shocked she’d looked when she'd tipped over the edge…

Yugito comes with a groan, pressing down to a tongue that pushes deeper to lap it all up until it’s edging into something a bit too much for even her and she draws back and off the other Omega and dips down to claim her in a rough and needy kiss, tasting herself inside her mouth to a rumble of satisfaction.

 _Mine,_ Yugito thinks with a flare of possessiveness, deep in Omega heat, and she knows it’ll pass but for the following three days her little kitten would belong to no-one but _her._

“Come here,” Yugito murmurs, tugging the loose-limbed kunoichi up and into her arms in their shared nest, the other immediately shifting to inhale deep as she pressed closer to Yugito’s own bonding gland, their legs twining together.

Yugito had felt the way the other lowered the chakra at the back of her neck during the massage and there’s a slight tremble to her hand as she slides it up and presses down gently to eyes that lid and then drops shut, completely and utterly content in her arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... Er. This ended up finished earlier than I expected because I was deep in contemplation on something else entirely and then my mind was like _Yugito Nii_ and who was I to question that? 
> 
> I really wanted to explore what an Omega/Omega heat might be like because I mostly hear about Alpha/Omega heats so this is my take on that after some consideration and thoughts about what being Omega is about.
> 
> I kinda want to do a Beta one as well because I have _thoughts_ so that's likely to happen. Eventually.
> 
> There are also ruts, of course.......
> 
> Yata is just... really getting herself in the mess of things (but what a sexy mess). We also gets some hint of **before** which will be explored down the line as we go.
> 
> Next chapter we meet Yugito in the aftermath and we pave our path ever forward.
> 
> Thank you for your fantastic reviews, always makes it all the more fun to write and share with you guys <3 
> 
> Artsy-death on tumblr if you want to swing by~ this has been chapter 5 of Criminals and Dreamers, I do believe.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	6. Konoha I

If spending her heat with Kisame left her achy and content then her heat with Yugito left her positively lethargic, yawning and scrubbing at her eyes as she peered about the room with a little shiver despite the many blankets and pillows around her - wrapped about in two of them.

Yugito's apartment a broad and open space – simple and spartan, with white walls and wooden flooring, couch and chairs with soft seats and draped with blankets. There’s the traditional jounin-genin photo on the wall near the kitchen but most other things about are small knick-knacks, a lot of books and a Go board.

She glances up when the door to the apartment opens, tensing and then relaxing as Yugito slipped inside looking far more chipper than Yata was anywhere near close to.

She still smelt richly of heat and hadn't bothered to dress in more than a soft shirt and pants, arms cradled with food and drinks that makes her stomach rumble.

“Hey there, kitten,” Yugito greets her. “I see you’re finally awake.”

“Somehow,” Yata admits, yawning wide enough that she felt her eyes water and another shiver ran through her, making her huddle up more firmly.

“Something to eat and something to drink will help you feel better,” Yugito assures her as she hoists herself onto the bed and folds down after nudging a soft blanket out of the way, close enough that their knees brushes together before she carefully starts unloading a little bit of everything – most of it bite size, an entire bowl of perfectly square pieces of fruit piled high. “I wasn’t sure what kind of food you’d like so I got some of everything.”

It’s… far more than Yata had any right to expect and she reaches out for some of the fruit, the bowl encouragingly nudged closer almost immediately, and the sweetness of the melon makes her swipe her tongue up and over her fingers to make sure she didn’t miss any of it before reaching for a new piece, Yugito’s eyes following before she switched her focus onto her own food.

The Kumo kunoichi didn’t lie – the food did make her feel better. Made her feel less cold and less tired even if her limbs remained loose and relaxed, at ease in a way that Yata knew was dangerous but not quite willing to give it up just yet.

She licks strawberry juice from her lips, pausing as a hand slid up against the side of her face, tilting and angling her mouth to another with a soft groan as Yugito shifted, knee settling down between the fold of her legs and urging her back as a tongue dipped into her mouth, chasing the sweet tartness of the fruit.

Food quite forgotten Yata arches her back with a small noise as her cunt dragged over the fabric of Yugito’s pants, the other nuzzling against her cheek with a low _whurr_ of content.

-

Her heat only lasts for four days but Yata spends nearly three weeks in the company of the jinchuuriki.

She doesn’t mean to and Yugito doesn’t push her to stay, languish in her appreciation for Yata’s body but never pushing for anything beyond it – coming and going, leaving Yata to her own device during the hours she was training with her team or sorting through mission papers.

Yugito touches her often and frequently and with a surety that Yata can’t help but crave – confident in its welcome as she slides her arms around Yata and draws her back against her chest, a chin settling against her shoulder to get a look at what she was making, smelling of dust and sweat and somehow absolutely amazing.

Yata knows she can’t stay but it’s somehow not as easy to come to terms with as it should be.

“Tired?” she asks when Yugito slowly settles more and more of her weight upon her shoulders with a little sigh against her ear.

“Mm,” the blonde agrees. “Long day.”

Dark grey eyes watches with lidded curiosity as she spreads the tomato sauce before starting to layer the different ingredient in a split of four different kinds of pizzas crammed into one.

“I haven’t made this in years,” Yata tells the other absently as her shirt is tugged at, her scent gland bared and nuzzled against, a tongue flattening against the teeth indentions that were still visible. “Not since-“ she pauses, a name that doesn’t belong to this world lingering on her tongue-

“Should I feel honoured then?” Yugito picks up, fingers sliding along the hem of her pants, finding and opening the button there before her hand dips down, nails scratching against the curls of bluish grey hair there, mouth sealing and sucking light and rhythmic as Yata groaned lightly, hand flattening down against the counter to a shudder.

“Very,” Yata agrees, nudging Yugito away to nails that drag up before slipping out, allowing Yata to slide the pizza into the oven before drawing her towards her, hoisting Yata easily up on the island counter and the smooth flat rock there. “Food will be done in twenty,” Yata says with a prickle of arousal as the other presses up between the spread of her legs.

“Plenty of time,” Yugito murmurs, drawing her into a kiss.

-

Yata watches the sleeping form of the blonde – drinking in the way she’s half-curled around a pillow, her body completely nude, hair loose and knees drawn up, her face lax in sleep as she breathed quietly in and out.

Yata’s eyes spin red, three black tomoe curling in place, burning the picture into her mind before she let them slide close, opening up to dark pupils.

She’s gone before Yugito draws her next breath.

A black t-shirt with a scale-like pattern on the front is missing from her laundry basket and in the fridge is two slices of pizza wrapped in plastic to keep from spoiling - the only evidence left of her stay.

-

She’s barely out of Kumo before a message from Kakuzu intercepts her in the form of a clay bird that makes her nose crinkle because it smells faintly of something that threatens to explode and she’s forced to snatch it and dodge as it _chirps_ before it does just that – taking a good chunk of the tree she’d ducked behind.

She stares blankly at the damage, promising herself to have _words_ with Kakuzu.

The note carries a single name and a sum of many zeroes and her brow dips down.

“Shimura Danzo?” She scratches two fingers against her chin, glancing in the general direction of Konoha with some hesitation. “Why do I have a bad feeling about this?” she murmurs, tracing the zeroes with her thumb.

The money made it way too good to pass up but it also made her wary.

She smoothes her hands up and down the paper until her chakra snags and she pushes down - watching white peel away to reveal a single kanji in place.

 _Ne._ Root.

Yata blows out a breath of air and plops down, drawing for pen and paper to scratch a note to her publisher, sealing her new book along.

-

Ichikawa is over the moon with her and he lets her know so – loudly and with many exclamations as she meets up with him some three weeks with an accompanying jounin as guard, a pretty relaxed looking man with scruffy brown hair and a pair of sunglasses covering his eyes.

“It worries me so when you insist to travel on your own,” Ichikawa frets as he looks her over and Yata allows him patiently, knowing it was better to let him get it out of his system, aware of the way the two gate guards are watching with some amusement as the elderly man practically demands her to remove her backpack, fails to lift it up himself and points for his guard to take it instead – a small flush to his cheeks.

“I’m completely fine,” Yata, in the role of Kazuya Shiho, reassures him. “Tou-san made sure I could take care of myself.”

She’s wearing a white yukata that makes her skin look even darker, the hair of the wig long and black where it falls down her back and a small genjutsu on her eyes have lightened them from black to a dark brown that looks a bit more natural.

Make-up has smoothed the stress-lines dipping by her eyes and the bags beneath them, cheekbones high-lighted to draw attention to them and a dip of black has added a mole just beneath her left ey, eyebrows trimmed to thin lines.

The geta on her feet completes the look.

Yata focuses her attention on the guard. “My name is Kazuya Shiho.” She gives him a small bow. “Thank you for taking care of Koji-san. He’s very dear to me.”

Predictably the old man flushes and glows beneath the compliment even as he tries to wave it away.

“Yamashiro Aoba,” the jounin introduces himself and she gives him a small smile.

Ichikawa is well familiar with her ability to take care of herself but he enjoys his role and it all too happy to offer her his arm, eyes intelligent and firm despite nearing his eighties.

-

Ichikawa has arranged the book release three weeks into her stay – apologizing about not being able to get it earlier but she soothes his worries and tells both him and his guard that she’s looking forward to enjoy the views of Konoha.

“I hear the Akimichi clan makes some of the greatest food in the Elemental countries,” she says a bit wistfully and Ichikawa takes his cues well – practically shooing her out the door with the jounin looking a bit surprised as it closed behind them both, his task suddenly rearranged to show her around the village.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she comments as they move down the merchant street, making sure to pause every now and then to browse over pottery and fine jewellery, things that didn’t really interest her but might interest someone like Kazuya Shiho. “It’s not often I get the time to really look around – I’m often so busy writing that I forget to stop and enjoy the little things.”

She lifts a delicate thing in a thin chain up, admiring the soft touch of very pale violet to the pearl.

“I get paid to spend the day company of a pretty woman,” Yamashiro says smoothly. “Don’t you worry, Kazuya-san.”

She hums in acknowledgement, paying after a brief exchange of words with the vendor and slipping it into the pocket of her yukata.

Yamashiro has no qualms about showing her to the tea houses, pointing out the different ones as Yata makes a mental note – knowing that Danzo was rumoured to enjoy his meetings at Ichimoku-an with his old teammates for a traditional _chanoyu_.

Kakuzu hadn’t sawn it fit to include exactly _what_ she was supposed to be looking for regarding the old war hawk other than the cryptic _Ne_ , which made her inclined to believe it was something that would be glaringly obvious once she came across it.

But it still caused her some trouble because it gave her little to work with.

Yamashiro does take her to one of the famous Akimichi restaurants but it is, predictably, rather full which makes her bow with a reassuring word to the apologetic waiter out front who offers to send her a message if one of the bookings were to be freed.

“I’m only here for a month,” she presses, feigning worry and some longing as she glances into the restaurant before averting her eyes, teeth sinking into her lower lip.

“I’m sorry,” the man says again and he does look like he means it as she bids him goodbye.

She feigns a little sigh as they walk away before perking up and pulls Yamashiro along to buy some fried squid from a woman in a bright pink sweater.

Akimichi were famous shinobi restaurants but she wasn’t really interested in the food in itself – just the excuse it offered to move about the village in pretense of finding small niche places to try new things.

At the end of the day she’s feeling faintly ill as she bids Yamashiro good night, closing the door to the room and counting to twenty before lurching towards the bathroom, barely getting a silencing seal in place before her knees hit the cool ground and she threw up.

She looks down at the mess, grimacing at all the wasted money.

-

It takes her nearly three days to _accidentally_ stumble into the path of the former Hyuuga heiress – clad in a pale lavender yukata and grinning as she caught sight of the younger girl in company of her jounin teacher.

There were better opportunities, sure, but Yuhi Kurenai had already caught sight of her and it would look strange if she backed out now.

“Hinata-chan!” she calls, raising a hand to the blind girl who gives a small twitch of surprise, head craning up in Yata's direction, the hollow of her eyes wrapped in a cloth of lavender for the day.

“Shiho-san?” the younger says in a mixture of surprise and hesitance.

“The one and only,” she agrees, fingers brushing against the other’s and clasping gently with a reassuring squeeze, enjoying the shy stretch of Hinata’s smile as she squeezed back. “We decided to release my new book in Konoha so I’m going to be here for a month, at least.”

“Oh!” Hinata says, something tentative hopeful in her body-language. “T-that’s wonderful,” she gets out.

“Mm,” Yata agrees. “Ichikawa, my publisher, is dealing with most of the details surrounding it so I’m just here enjoying the food and the sights.” She makes a show of perking up. “We should hang out! If you have time, that is. I know shinobi life is supposed to be pretty busy.” She rubs at the back of her neck, aware of the way Kurenai is watching her but pretending not to.

“I- I’d love to,” Hinata says a bit breathlessly. “Kurenai-sensei-“

“Go,” the dark haired woman says, red eyes warm as she looks at her female student and if she had any reservations about her spending time with a foreign citizen she makes no show of it. “We’ll catch up later.”

“Thank you!” Hinata squeaks out and Yata grins as she slides her arm through the other’s, tugging her along to a little noise of surprise as she stumbled along before catching herself, arm tightening around her own.

-

The time since her last visit had been kind to Hinata – she moved with another sort of surety, taking the lead as Yata played the part of the foreign visitor, asking questions and nudging the conversation along, listening idly, aware of the looks they were drawing, mostly from the shinobi population, gossipy bunch that they were.

It was a bit uncomfortable, Yata quite preferred anonymity, but if she wanted to visit a shinobi tea house like Ichimoku-an then it was better to establish herself as a civilian who didn’t mind shinobi, first, and if she steered conversation right she might even get Hinata to invite her there herself.

That she genuinely didn’t mind the other’s company is just a bonus.

“W-what kind of books do you write?” Hinata asks as she bites into a spoon of shaved ice drizzled with syrup, Yata quite thankful for something that settled easy in her belly after all the heavy food she’d been partaking in lately.

“Romance,” she says after swallowing a mouthful of half-melted bits, tongue flattening up against the spoon for the sticky sweetness lingering on it. “You know, the princess falls in love with the kunoichi or two geisha who abandons everything to be together – that kind of stuff.”

Hinata flushes faintly pink. “Oh,” she says, fingers curling together. “How…?”

“Did I decide on it?” Yata ventures and Hinata nods, the colour on her cheeks darkening. “It’s fun to write,” she admits. “Cheesy but – there’s always a happy end, you know? It’s nothing like the real world. There’s always going to be hope – no matter the twists and turns their roads takes.”

Writing had started as an absent idea while working for an excuse to travel but she’d found she liked it – often mocking and criticising herself aloud as she worked through the texts. But it was relieving to work through issues in another voice than her own – the struggles of coming to terms with a body very unlike her own curled into scratchy kanji after waking up in the middle of the night, unable to go back to sleep.

It’s of looking in the mirror, seeing black instead of dark brown, skin with an undertone of ash where there’d been warmth, hair grayish blue instead of black and tightly coiled, limbs longer, fingers shorter, sharp nose where it’d been flat-

Yata had been robbed of her very identity for all that she’d been given a second chance at life and there are bad days and there are worse days.

“But enough about me – how you’ve been?” Yata asks, watching from the corner of her eye as a pale blonde girl paused mid-step alongside a pink haired girl to quite blatantly stare at them both. “You looked like you were still figuring some stuff out last time I saw you,” she comments, eyes settling back on her companion as her lips pursued into an unsure sort of wobbly thing that was neither a smile nor a frown.

“I think… I think I’m doing much better,” Hinata confesses quietly, fingers fiddling idly with the paper packaging. “I’ve been staying with- with Kurenai-sensei,” the purple haired girl confesses in a little rush. “No one thought I could be a kunoichi… like this,” Hinata says with a dip of her brow, fingers touching briefly against the wrap of fabric around her eyes “B-But I’m figuring it out! Kurenai-sensei and Anko-san has both been helping me a-and according to Tsunade-sama I’ll be able to start taking missions by the end of next month.” A flush of colour darkens her cheeks, body-language shifting, as if preparation to be mocked or dismissed.

“I’m glad,” Yata says and she means it, giving the other’s shoulder a small bump with her own. “You nervous about being back in the field after being away from it?”

Hinata opens her mouth but then she closes it, drawing a small breath and letting it out and Yata blinks as something determined settles in the line of her shoulder. “I’m going to do fine.” The words are firm, obviously repeated on behest of someone else and daring her to question it.

“Of course,” Yata agrees easily. “I might know you that well but you’ve never given me reason to think any differently,” Yata says with a little grin, delighted when Hinata flushes dark red, stuttering out something that didn’t make much sense before she clicked her mouth shut, looking quite willing to melt into a puddle of embarrassment as she squeaked out a _thank you._

“Sometimes,” Yata ventures after shaking out the last of the shaved ice into her mouth and swallowing it down, “it can take us a little bit of time to find our footing again but experiencing things… and overcoming them, it has the capacity to leave us all the better for it.” _And sometimes it leaves us all the worse,_ Yata thinks but does not voice.

“Do you- do you really think so?” Hinata asks and Yata’s heart aches for how young she sounds.

“Yes,” she lies. “I do.”

They throw the trash away and this time Hinata is the one who loops her arm through Yata’s, a small shy smile on her lips as they amble down the street, Yata forced to relent and trust Hinata had her senses open on the surroundings since darting her gaze about was a sure tell for shinobi-undercover.

She also pretends not to notice that the blonde and pink haired girl had taken to following them.

Judging by their age Yata had to guess that it was _possible_ they might be old classmates to Hinata which likely meant that they were _nosy_ but not necessarily _dangerous._

The blonde is very quite possibly a Yamanaka – Yata had done her research on the clan, quite ill at ease at the thought of someone being able to just _waltz into her mind_ and very determined to stay far away from them.

The girl is nearly identical to the current clan head, one Yamanaka Inoichi, who was high-up in the T.I. section which _no thank you._

The other Yata actually knew by name – _Haruno Sakura._

The civilian born kunoichi apprenticed to the Godaime Hokage herself.

“Shiho-san.” Yata slants her eyes to Hinata at the hesitance in her voice. “Could you- could you tell me a bit about yourself?”

“A bit about myself?” she echoes.

Hinata nods, a contemplative little dip to her brow. “Kurenai-sensei said- she said you have black hair and that- that your eyes are brown,” Hinata admits in a little rush. “But-“

“I’m eighteen,” Yata tells her gently, a curl of _something_ in her chest. “My skin is brown and the colour is cool – you know how ink have a blue undertone? A bit like that only not quite that dark. I have a pretty lean build I suppose, and I tend to favour traditional wear. I’m currently in a yukata and you’ve probably heard the clack of my geta sandals.”

Hinata is quiet as she listens, perhaps putting the pieces together with what she already knew of her.

“And you?” Yata nudges. “Give me the run-down.”

“Y-you already know what I look like though,” Hinata says with a shake of her head.

“Indulge me,” Yata presses.

Hinata is quiet for several moments and Yata steers her towards one of the stalls, hands absently gliding over the soft colourful scarfs there.

“I’m- I’m fifteen,” Hinata begins hesitantly as Yata looks away from the neon orange thing that had brought her mind to a certain blond brat. “I’m- my skin is pale and–“ A swallow. “My hair is purple and- I think I need to cut it and- my eyes they- they were-“

“Hey.” Yata halts her. “Hey- okay, so maybe this was a bad idea-“

She quiets when Hinata shakes her head and there’s something roughish about it, something close to frustration. “Tsunade-sama says that- that talking about it is supposed to help.” Hinata clasps her hands together to stop the faint tremble visible through them. “And-“ She quiets suddenly, swallowing, and Yata senses the change in her when she turns face-to-face with Yata. “M-my eyes, someone- stole them from me because of the bloodline limit of my clan,” Hinata confesses to her. “It was- it was just a couple of months before I met you,” she admits. “But- you were the first – you were the first one who looked at me and-you- you didn’t _pity_ _me_ and- and you made me feel _normal._ ”

Hinata’s knuckles are straining against the skin before they slowly relaxes and she ducks her head, turning away from Yata who draws a shuddering breath – quite unaware of when she’d stopped breathing.

“I am glad we met again,” Hinata tells her and there’s a stubbornness to her jaw when she says it, as if daring Yata to contradict her.

Yata opens her mouth.

Closes it.

Swallows.

 _Life is a gamble for survival_ , this Yata understands and it has been the truth of her world since she was old enough to grasp for her brother’s hand, a tooth-gaped grin and brown eyes swallowing up her vision and her world.

She’s good at compartmentalization and it allowed her to do what she did and go to sleep at the end of the day.

But even Yata is only human and she finds herself without words to offer in return.

"Hinata?"

Yata twists around to stare at the two girls while Hinata's face did a complicated thing before she offered a hesitant smile.

"Sakura-san, Ino-san," the purple haired girl greets with a little tilt of her head. "M-my former classmates," Hinata tells Yata who hums, tightening her grip on the other when she made to withdraw from her.

"Kazuya Shiho," she greets, still a bit shaken. "Did you two want something?"

Sakura's eyes flicks to Hinata but Yata remains uncomfortably aware of the Yamanaka's gaze as she studies her.

"I haven't seen you around before," Ino comments and if this one didn't have a future business in interrogation like her clan head Yata would eat her left foot.

Curious and nosy and with enough guts to back it up.

"S-Shiho-san is an author," Hinata steps in.

"I have a book release here in three weeks," Yata confirms, shifting just a bit closer to the other. "Hinata-chan has been kind enough to show me around." Not a lie and not the complete truth.

"How did you get to know each other?" Ino presses with a fake nonchalance.

It takes Yata everything she has to not let a sudden and completely misplaced violence flood through her scent - clamping down and shoving it deep deep down as she offered a smile with more teeth than what was neccessarily polite.

"I'm sorry," she says. "But I should get back to my publisher. Get things in order for the release you know." Yata turns to Hinata, dismissing the other two as she shoves a hand into the pocket or her yukata and fishes for the small book and pen there.

Scribbles her hotel and room number on a free page and rips it out, folding it twice before slipping it into Hinata's hand. "Kurenai-san can help you find me," she says. "Sorry to cut this short."

"I-It's okay," Hinata reassures her with a weak smile that twists something inside of her.

"Don't be a stranger," Yata says, waving as she turns and trots off in the opposite direction.

"It was nice meeting you, Kazuya-san!" the blonde calls after her to a hissed _Ino_ and an elbow from the pink girl beside her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yata is having a complicated sort of time right now and she really needs to take a step back and breathe out but she's not really in a position to do so right now.
> 
> She's up to her ears in it as usual and I have some great plans for this Konoha Arc - you are in for quite the ride.
> 
> Thank you for your fantastic comments, makes this whole adventure an absolute treat to write<3 I'll try to get back you in a bit - right now I need to haul out my dog for a walk and catch the moment to play some Pokémon Go this fine Sunday.
> 
> Comment field is open business and I'm artsy-death on tumblr if you want to swing by and say hi! This has been chapter 6 of Criminals and Dreamers.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	7. Konoha II

Ichikawa gives her a _look_ when she slides into the back of the bookstore, eyebrow rising up when she gives him a stiff smile.

He’s in the company of Yamashiro whose chakra had been suppressed down to near nothing, leaving just a vague impression even to her, and she pretends not to have noticed him as she lets out a sigh, squeezing and rubbing at the back of her neck as she sunk down into the chair beside him.

“How are you, my dear?” Ichikawa inquiries, surrounded by piles of paper and unpacked boxes filled with her new book – a part of them which would be signed and shipped to other villages for distribution to boost sales.

There was a reason Ichikawa and her worked so well – he covered for her and took care of all the details and in return he got half of her revenue, no question or debate about it.

Perhaps it could be considered a cruel insurance but Ichikawa knew that as long as her secrets were safe then she would make sure he had the money he needed to take care of his sick grandchild.

That he had a genuine sort of enthusiasm for the work and time invested in it – taking pride of being the independent publisher of a book series of some fame – only worked in her favour.

“It’s a wonderful village, Konoha,” Yata says, tipping her head back against the plush backrest and squeezing her eyes shut, palm rubbing over them. “It’s just… a lot.” 

“You’ve never been overly fond of crowds,” he remarks and she can’t say much about that – she did enjoy it in doses but being surrounded by enemy shinobi for hours at time wasn’t good for her nerves in any way shape or form. “Maybe stay inside for the rest of the day and head to a bar later on? Relax a bit.” Ichikawa suggests. “I’m sure Aoba-kun knows a good place, he could take you.”

Yata twitches when Yamashiro steps into view, his chakra rising to settle into something more normal which made her already high-wired senses ache.

“Shinobi are not welcome in civilian bars,” the Konoha jounin comments, tone just mild enough to assure them he didn’t mean offense by it.

“Then take her to one of your shinobi bars.” Ichikawa waves a hand dismissively. “Alcohol is the same wherever you go.”

Yata glances at Yamashiro whose chakra let her know that he wasn’t overly looking forward to escorting a civilian to a shinobi bar even as his face remained polite as he inclined his head.

“Very well,” he relents and Ichikawa must have paid him at least A-rank for such an easy agreement. “Will ten pm be acceptable?” he asks, turning to her.

Yata mentally counts the hours, not overly enthused by the idea of playing civilian at a bar but quite willing to at least drink herself mildly buzzed and do some recon at the same time – well aware that time was working against her on this mission.

“Of course,” she agrees.

-

Yata sleeps for nearly four hours before her internal alarm wakes her up and she takes a nearly twenty minute long shower spent cleaning up and trimming down her nails and making sure she was squeaky clean.

Afterwards she puts on lotion that had a whiff of sea breeze clinging to it before working the make-up to distract from the features of _Yata_ and make _Kazuya Shiho_ , watching herself in the mirror as black eyes turn a far more familiar shade of whisky brown, a dot placed below near the corner of her left one.

Settles her wig in place, securing it with a scentless, water-based glue at the hem of it to make sure it couldn’t just torn off by accident.

It would demand a really hot shower afterwards but Yata was fine with that – one couldn’t be too careful, especially if she was looking for some sort of relaxation at the bar.

Yata breathes out and ambles back to the bedroom, nude, settling down on the floor to paint her nails and sprawls out on her back, humming tunelessly as she waits for them to dry.

Considering the sheer versatility of seals Yata found herself constantly bemused by how little it was used among the common shinobi outside missions.

Orochimaru himself had helped her tattoo the inside of her lower lip and she gives her tongue a nick before flicking it over it, watching as her cloak flares out to spiral down and settle upon her chest.

Yata pats it down, finding and stroking a finger down the correct seal and letting the clothes land with a  _flump_ after appearing in a cloud of smoke.

It’s simple but nice clothing – a short yukata with koi fishes and fine patterned with details that left large patches of blue in places. She’d sealed it along with a pair of black tights that ended near her ankles. 

She decides to keep the geta.

As a finishing touch Yata fishes the pearl necklace from the pocket of her white yukata and slips it on just as a polite knock lets her know the Konoha jounin is there to pick her up.

-

They’re barely a step into the bar before Aoba is being flagged down, loud shouting and raucous laughter around them and far too much curiosity in the eyes that turn to focus upon the two of them.

Yata makes a beeline for the bar, leaving the jounin to defend his reputation as she leaned onto the counter and raised two fingers to flag down the kunoichi manning the thing.

“Whisky,” she orders when the woman turns purple eyes towards her, hair just a shade darker in colour and with a messy fringe. “Double.”

“Coming right up,” the woman murmurs, tipping down a pretty decent one from the shelf and a glass from beneath the counter, pouring and sliding it down to her waiting hand.

Yata lifts it to her lips, taking a generous swallow, feeling the burn and heat as it travels down her throat, filling her up her chest and easing some of the tension from her shoulders.

Her next sip is smaller and she breathes in the sting of smoky liquid, eyes closing, before placing it down with a rough exhalation.

She isn’t overly surprised to find the bartender just a step away from her when she opens her eyes again, rag dipped into a glass to give an impression of idle business.

“Haven’t seen you before,” the bartender comments, searching and curious while keeping an open and friendly expression.

“I’m not from Konoha,” Yata admits easily. “Just here for my new book release.”

The other woman hums and her chakra flickers, getting a responding one from Shiranui Genma who’d crowded close to Yamashiro who’d been hauled into the midst of several other Konoha shinobi – notable keeping to water but polite enough not to give her the impression of spending the night on her own.

Which meant they were both sensors, like Yata herself, which was reason enough to be extra careful around the two of them.

Sensors were rare – a good one even rarer.

Most shinobi weren’t aware of just how much they were giving away with their chakra at all given time but Yata was sensitive enough to pick up on impressions and warnings which gave her a leg up when dealing with less... savory clients.

For Konoha to have two so easily available...

The bartender leaves her alone when Yata makes no move to keep the conversation going and she slowly relaxes, allowing the alcohol to dull her mind, to drown down the paranoia into something less sharp and jarring.

Yata inhales, turning her head to the woman who’d ordered a drink beside her and tries not to feel tired when she finds red eyes upon her.

“Kazuya Shiho-san, right?” Yuhi Kurenai inquires politely, scent masked and chakra tense where it coiled around her.

“Shiho is fine,” she assures, flagging down a refill, on the rocks this time, and the bartender delivers easily, something smokier this time, darker, the burn of it making her nostrils flare as she inhales the fumes of it and Yata give her a little toast of appreciation after taking a small sip.

“Hinata must have mentioned me,” the woman presses lightly, sliding into the seat and settling down.

“Her jounin sensei,” Yata relents. “Yes.” She turns, angling her body more properly towards the other to give her a considering look over the rim of her glass. “She also told me you’re living together so you must be pretty close.”

“Indeed,” Kurenai agrees, eyes searching.

Yata is so far away from being in the mood from an interrogation but she’s never liked drinking alone – would even take this over holing herself inside her hotel room with a bottle.

It felt too much like giving up.

In a bar she had the excuse of companionship while empty walls was just that; **empty**.

“Sorry,” she says, grimacing when she realised the other had been speaking. “I didn’t catch any of that.”

Kurenai pauses, something flicking through her chakra. “Long day?” she inquiries.

“I spend a lot of time travelling,” Yata says. “It’s… different, being inside the walls of a village like Konoha. Takes some getting used to, I suppose.” She offers a smile, a strange craving for Yugito’s gentle touch running through her where she sat on the round chair at the bar, surrounded by strangers and enemies.

Yata takes a distracted sip of her whisky, not quite up for dealing with her mind, an absent hand rubbing over the back of her neck where chakra had once again been firmed and hardened in a protective layer.

A body drops into the chair on the other side of her and Yata inhales, the scent of Beta crawling up her nose and down to expand her lungs as she turned her head, finding brown eyes and purple hair – a familiar face but not met as Kazuya Shiho but as _Nanashi._

A sharp grin greets her. “Hey there,” Anko says, stealing and taking a hearty sip of her whisky. “Oh, that’s is some good stuff.” Her eyes flicks to the bartender, a pout on her lips. “Yu-chan, you never indulge me like this!” Anko complains. “You always give me the shitty stuff.”

 _Yu-chan_ gives her a flat smile with too many teeth and Anko blanches. “Maybe if you paid your tab,” the jounin bartender comments mildly and Anko makes a nervous noise.

“Yeah,” she says. “Maybe if I do that.” Anko raises the glass to take another mouthful of whisky only to find it stolen out of her hand and placed back in front of Yata who curls her hands around it, drawing it towards her chest as Kurenai gave Anko a warning look.

The former apprentice of Orochimaru sighs in exaggeration. “Fine,” she says. “Give me some of that shitty stuff of yours,” she grouches to a flat smile from the bartender who reaches for the cheapest whisky with deliberation that makes Anko’s chakra twitch.

Yata draws her shoulders up, focusing down on the amber liquid, second-guessing her decision to go out as she felt a headache building behind her eyes, nudging up alongside a deep settling apathy that makes her jaw clench down because she knew better than to let it take root and she swallows, throat suddenly dry, taking a large mouthful of the whisky in an attempt to soothe it.

 _What’s wrong with me?_ Yata wonders, Hinata’s words from the afternoon crawling over her mind and heart, demanding her attention, Kurenai and Anko’s voices like strange and distant buzz.

_I am glad we met again._

Yata raises the glass to take a desperate swallow only to find a hand settling around her wrist, halting her, and that deep an unsettling anger rises and dies between one breath and the other, forced so violently down that Yata nearly gives herself a whiplash.

She doesn’t look at Kurenai, instead she directs her attention to Anko, trying desperately to ignore the strange ache from the lack of warmth as Kurenai removed her hand. “I don’t think we’ve had the pleasure of introduction; Kazuya Shiho,” she offers. “Author and traveller.”

Anko slants her a peculiar sort of look that Yata doesn’t have the energy to read.

“Mitarashi Anko,” she says, eyes watchful, but Yata couldn’t care less about her reputation past the danger of dealing with someone who’d been trained by the snake Sannin.

Yata had experienced it herself, after all, knew just what a violent and clever teacher he was.

“Hinata-chan mentioned you, I think,” she says instead, deciding that playing dumb to shinobi rumours was just the easiest way to handle it.

“Did she now?” Anko comments, hand catching and curling around the glass the bartender slides down the counter to her. “What else did she mention?”

“Not much,” Yata says, eyes sliding away to focus somewhere in front of her. “We cut it short today.”

 _I should leave,_ Yata thinks but cannot get herself to move, fingers tapping absently against the glass in her hand, the itch to just down it overwhelming and she forces herself to breathe over it, to let the alcohol already in her body settle and cloud the paranoia and strange ache inside of her chest.

 _These people mean something to Hinata,_ Yata thinks and her teeth aches where her jaw clenches down before she forces herself to relax, forces herself not to think, and _Yata_ falls down down ** _down_** until only _Shiho_ remains, blinking as she shifts on the single chair, a mischievous smile creeping over her lips as her shoulders eases and jaw relaxes.

“Say, have you ever heard of a game called poker?” Shiho asks the two jounin.

-

Yata blinks awake in a room she does not recognise, sprawled out on her back in an unfamiliar bed with an unfamiliar smell curling around her and she inhales, thinks _Beta_ , an undercurrent of something reptilian bringing her mind to Orochimaru but-

It lacks the apathetic clinical sting of the Sannin, leaving something warmer that threads with something sweet.

 _Anko_ , her mind dredges up after a moment, slowly identifying the woman half-sprawled on top of her, a pool of drool on her shoulder where she’d pressed close in sleep.

There’s a tell-tale ache from alcohol, a dry disgusting film inside of her mouth and a blur of impressions from the evening before, as if looking at a flickering television screen with bad sound – the aftermath of a severe episode of disassociation.

But Yata cannot deny that her mind feels calmer, strangely at ease even with Orochimaru’s former apprentice curled around her, feeling emotions that are hers and yet not and it should worry her but it _doesn’t_.

She breathes out, ruffling strands of purple hair and Anko shifts closer, octopus like in her clinging.

 _Well, fuck him!_ Yata remembers exclaiming but the exact details won’t quite register past cards slapped down on a table, too many glasses and bottles to belong to just three people crowding about, a vague impression of laughter and _hear hear!_ ringing out around her to clinks of toasting being made.

There are more bodies about – three in the room outside, likely on a couch, and one curled up by her feet, unfamiliar yet somehow reassuring in its press against her.

Yata feels lethargic and sleepy and she knows that once she gets to sit down and catch a moment on her own she’s going to be regretting a lot of things.

But she also knows that she hadn’t been in a right state of mind to handle things the night before.

 _Weak,_ her mind informs her and Yata has nothing to offer in return, shifting to press closer to the other woman who doesn’t hesitate to draw her closer, leg thrown over her and her head tucked up beneath a soft chin as Anko folded around her with a little snuffling noise.

-

The next time Yata wakes up it’s to a palm against her shoulder and she jerks in surprise, arms tightening around her chest, an arm around her leg drawing her closer as she blinked blearily awake.

“You have to let her go, Anko,” Kurenai’s voice comes from somewhere above her. “It’s nearly noon and you have a meeting with Tsunade-sama in an hour. You need to at least shower.”

“No I don’t,” a muffled voice protests far too close to her ear, making her shiver.

“Yes you do,” Kurenai insists. “And Shiho-san has her book business to deal with.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that,” Kurenai says dryly. “Since Aoba just knocked on the door looking for her on his client’s behalf.”

A miserable grumble let’s her know Anko is none too impressed and Yata grunts in protest when arms withdraws from her, peering about blearily as Anko rolled out and onto her feet to pad down the corridor, leaving her alone with Kurenai, who is watching her with an expression Yata isn’t too sure what to make of, and the shape curled up by her feet.

“How are you holding up?” the Konoha jounin asks her and Yata yawns in response.

“I’m good,” she says, rubbing the end of her palm over her cheek to get some life back into her face.

She might remember little of the day before but evidence pointed to it having gone _fine._ There was no other reason for waking up in an unfamiliar bed with a jounin curled around her like a cuddly toy and Yata was determined to take it for what it was.

 _I’m not in T.I. or jail,_ she thinks and that, decidedly, makes it a good morning.

“Shizune-san is cooking breakfast if you want something to eat. Anything you’re allergic to?”

“None,” Yata reassures. “And thank you – breakfast would be golden.”

Another peculiar look and then Kurenai smiles at her and Yata stills as a hand reaches out to ruffle the dark hair of her wig before the woman pads out of the room, door closing silently behind her as Yata stares after her – frozen in place.

 _What,_ Yata wonders a bit desperately, _exactly happened last night to warrant that?_

Pushing up she looks down, blinking at the sight of the bartender from the bar, _Yu-chan_ , sleeping quietly – chest barely rising and falling, her breathing quiet, one arm wrapped around Yata’s leg, cheek resting just below her knee, chakra a low buzz that barely registered on her senses.

Some shinobi were like that – a constant state of _not wanting to be seen_.

For all that the entire situation left her vaguely paranoid with the loss of time and memories Yata had to pat herself on the back because she’d established Kazuya Shiho as someone who didn’t mind a bit of fun with shinobi which, hopefully, would allow her a bit of leeway in her attempt to make some digging on Shimura Danzo and whatever this _Ne_ Akatsuki wanted to know about was.

It did come with the drawback of having Konoha shinobi _aware of her_ but if Yata’s honest with herself this was far better than anything she’d dared to hope for when settling out on this endeavour.

All she needed to do was make sure they couldn’t connect Kazuya Shiho to Nanashi (or Yata), find out about _Ne_ and get through her book signing before being able to leave all of this behind in just a month’s time.

Perfectly doable.

“You’re thinking too much,” Yu informs her, startling her from her thoughts with a little jerk as she looks up, finding that the other kunoichi had cracked her eyes open to regard her from where she laid curled around her leg without shame.

“Am not,” Yata denies instinctively, still not quite sure what to make of the woman so close to her.

“Got a bit of a blackspot from yesterday?” Yu guesses and Yata makes a decision between one heartbeat and the other, allowing her face to twist into a bit of an embarrassed grimace as she turns away.

“’s okay,” the Konoha shinobi says with a twitch of her mouth. “You kept up surprisingly well for a civilian,” she says with a touch of amusement, fingers stroking idly up her leg as Yata flared her nose, trying to get a feel for the other’s secondary gender but picking up nothing.

Scent blockers then – strong enough to match her own if they were holding up this well after a night of drinking.

Konoha always had the good stuff.

“No one took advantage of you, if that’s what you’re worried about,” the woman says, finally drawing up and away from Yata, movement graceful enough to bring her mind to a certain blonde in Kumo. “I think you made an impression on ‘Nai-chan because she stuck firmly to your side for the entirety of it, even carried you back here.”

Sometimes Yata forgets that her body is only eighteen – edging towards nineteen.

She’s almost fifty years old and she’s alive in a world of shinobi that send their children out on the battlefields. She could order her first whisky at eleven and no-one had stopped to question it because the stolen Kiri hitai-ate on her forehead sold her as something she was not.

She might have been reborn a child in this world but it had never treated her as one. The first years of her life is four wooden walls of the small wardrobe inside the brothel her mother worked at and streets of starving and hollow eyed children.

Concern is an entirely foreign thing and there's irony in Yuhi Kurenai, jounin teacher of the girl she’d gouged out the eyes of, being the one to show her even a misplaced echo of it.

Konoha is a strange village, Yata decides, not quite sure what to feel about it as she absently raises her hand and scratches two fingers against her cheek.

-

Yata wraps herself in a dark green robe she finds inside one of the drawers and reapplies her suppressants after making sure it’d been staying firmly on- reassured when all she could scent was the overwhelming spread of Beta in the small room.

Yu had already left, dodging out the window before Yata had started undressing, and she closes the door behind her - following her nose around the corner and to the kitchen.

 _Shizune-san_ turns out to be the Godaime Hokage’s assistant – a dark haired woman with a face that Yata can only describe as _kind_ for all that she knows it’s a displaced word in association with kunoichis.

“Good morning, Shiho-san,” she greets with a warm smile when Yata slinks into the kitchen, eyes flickering over the face of one Genma and one Raidou, her mind flicking to their meeting in the woods as _Nanashi_ and then to another memory entirely of glass clinking together and a warm arm around her shoulder flashes past.

“’morning,” Genma echoes around a mouthful of rice and Raidou slumps down, just caught from crashing into his food by his partner who darts out to yank him up by his collar to a snort.

“Good morning,” Yata greets, eyes darting down to the tiny pink pig in red vest and pearl necklace with a sense of bemusement.

“That’s Tonton,” Shizune informs her as Yata squats down, round piggy eyes immediately fixating upon her. “She’s a _Ninton_ which means she’s smarter than normal animals.”

Which Yata wasn’t likely to have known if she was an actual civilian and she hums in interest, cocking her head to the side, seeing it echoed by the small pig as she reaches out to offer it her hand.

It makes a noise, a _buhi_ , clearly inhaling her smell before it presses its snout into her palm, allowing her to slide her hand up and curl her fingers to scratch behind small floppy ears with a tiny smile that creeps unbidden onto her face as its tail starts wagging with clear enthusiasm and a louder, happier _buhi!_

“Aren’t you just a cutie,” Yata murmurs to the pig and Tonton’s eyes practically sparkles as Yata settles down on the floor, back on her rump, her legs spread to allow the tiny pig to trot closer, tiny hoof-like feet stepping unafraid onto her thigh to reach higher as she scratched down below its chin.

“She must like you,” Shizune comments with a small smile and Yata glances up. “She belongs to Tsunade-sama but she usually stays with me since new people tend to stress her out.”

“I’ve always liked animals,” Yata admits, a bit warmly amused by the Godaime Hokage having a pet pig of all things.

One of her fondest memories were the school trip they’d done in her first world to a small farm where she’d snuck off to pet the goats when the others were busy doing _trust exercises._  

The kid goats had climbed all over her, eating out her hand and snuffling her pockets for more, begging for scratches at the itching skin around their horns that nearly made them tip right over when she scrubbed down roughly at it.

There’s been a fat lazy brown cat there as well, chickens pecking in the yard and a single large pig with black and white pelt that had stuck its nose out through the wooden poles to lick the sour pieces of apples from the palm of hand.

She’d never had an animal of her own but she’d occasional spent her money on some cat food for the strays near her apartment.

They were uncomplicated things. If an animal liked you they showed it and if they disliked you they let you know.

Tonton gives her chin a little lick and Yata’s lips quirks up before she reluctantly nudges the creature down and pushes up with less grace than she normally would – still in the disguise of Kazuya Shiho which the dark hair of her wig made her reminded of.

The little pig squeaks at her feet and she feels it nudging up against her leg, rump settling down beside when she draws the chair out and sinks down on it just as Shizune slides a plate down in front of her and settles down with one for herself.

Yata can hear the shower running and the low murmur of voices from inside the bathroom- Anko’s exasperation loud but muffled traded with the somewhat dry words of Kurenai.

The entire situation is strange but Yata forces herself not to linger on it as she bites down on the first rice ball, humming at the sour taste of the _umeboshi_.

“By the way, Shiho-san, when would you like me pick you up?” Shizune asks just as Yata had started on her third rice ball and the only thing that keeps her from inhaling the rice and choking on it is a life time of clinging to the timely advice from an elderly woman who’d patted her shoulder with a jerky sort of motion and loudly whispered; _what they know, you know_ when she was eighteen and in handcuffs for the first time.

“When,” Yata says with some deliberate care in choosing her words, “do you think the optimal time to go would be?”

Shizune takes a bite of her rice ball, giving it some consideration as she chews It down. “I believe Kurenai-san mentioned your publisher was looking for you so maybe late afternoon?” the other woman suggests. “Maybe five o’clock? That way we can avoid the worst of the heat and enjoy a bit of a breeze.” 

Shizune smiles at her and Yata echoes it instinctively even as her mind is a flood with confusion.

 _Why do we want a bit of breeze?_ Yata wonders warily as she meets the dark eyes of the other. _And why do I want it with t **he Godaime’s assisstant?**_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yata experienced something akin to a dissociation fugue if you aren't already familiar with the term and want to read a bit about it. The short notes on it: it's a defensive mechanism against trauma that helps people disconnect emotionally or physically from a situation that is in some manner distressing, threatening or intolerable. 
> 
> In Yata's case it's a bit like an extreme form of compartmentalization, if that helps.
> 
> Like slipping on another pair of shoes. 
> 
> I'm having fun with this Konoha Arc even if Yata isn't having the best of times and I'm getting to explore some of my headcanons regarding shinobi village culture which is pretty neat. 
> 
> _Keep you friends close but your enemies closer_ , as they say. 
> 
> Thank you for your fantastic comments, I'm very blessed<3 I try to get back to them when I can! I'm artsy-death on tumblr.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


	8. Konoha III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys, shout out to [Seltix](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seltix/pseuds/Seltix) for editing and just generally being a such an awesome person in helping me get this up and allowing me to spend more time writing instead of editing<3 I cannot express my love enough.

It turns out that Ichikawa genuinely does need her help and Yata spends the morning going through some official contracts and talking with a representative from Konoha in regards to the details of the book release which were already gathering some curious readers peeking inside to inquire about it.

“This is so exciting,” the woman says, shaking her hand at the end of the day. “We are very pleased you’ve chose Konoha for the release of the next part of your _Kimyona Ai_ series, Kazuya-sensei!” She leans forward and Yata tries very hard to draw back because the enthusiasm was a bit over the top in terms of what she felt was appropriate for a cheesy romance series. “Is it true that it’s about a Beta trio this time?” she whispers, all hush. “Rumours say there’s samurais involved!”

The woman had introduced herself as Inuzuka Kana and Yata has a strong suspicion she’d volunteered for the duty.

“It would be unfair to tell,” Yata says with a quirk of her lips that fit Kazuya Shiho well. “Wouldn’t you say?”

Kana’s eyes widen and she nods, shuffling back. “You have my apologies,” she says. “I’m just - it’s not often we have authors visiting,” she says with a helplessly warm smile and Yata can’t really say much about that.

They bid goodbye and Yata puts a hand on her hip, breathing out.

“We’ll do most of the signing on the release day,” Ichikawa says behind her, arms full of paper and the bookstore owner hovering at his shoulder. “You should shower and dress, your date will arrive soon.”

The only thing that stops her from giving him a very dry look is the fact that Yamashiro is still around to witness it and Kazuya Shiho is supposed to be beyond it.

-

The good thing about her disguise is that Kazuya Shiho wears a yukata as everyday garb and it’s something that works in nearly all situations. There’s a low-chance she’ll appear too overdressed or too underdressed - no matter what she’s volunteered herself for with the Godaime’s assistant.

At least that’s the reassurance she forces upon her anxious brain as she steps out of the shower.

Yata picks a soft pink one and secures a short knife to the back of her thigh where it would remain out of sight even when she knelt. She paints her nails pearl pink and spends nearly twenty minutes choosing a hair-style that she feels sure about – keeping it traditional but not too intricate and securing it with a fine flowery _kanzashi_ she’d received from Orochimaru when she first started on her disguise as Kazuya Shiho.

Yata doesn’t think she’d ever sat so still in her life - on her knees in front of the mirror as Orochimaru combed through the dark strands of her wig and showed her how to wear it.

The flowers are soft white with jade leaves and it isn’t often she gets to wear it. Yata keeps her hair short and messy and isn’t really the sort to take the time for make-up and fine things, which was precisely why Kazuya Shiho _does._

Left with some time before Shizune’s arrival, Yata decides to sort through some of the recent messages from her network.

She scratches out a note and nicks her index finger once done before pressing it into the middle of her palm, resulting in a small _poof_ and revealing a large horned beetle.

 _“Message, message,”_ it hisses with a click. _“We bring, we do, we help.”_

“That you do,” Yata agrees in a low murmur. “Can you bring this to contact 42 in Kiri?”

 _“Kiri, Kiri, Kiri,”_ it agrees. _“Human smells of fish, of fish, of fish.”_

It allows her to paint a small storage seal on its belly, her ink nearly the exact shade of its dark bluish plates, and she fetches a small squashed piece of fruit to enjoy at its leisure, leaving the window open just a crack for it to squeeze through.

It had taken her nearly a year to track down the beetle contract but it was well worth it. They were small creatures, hardy enough that they appeared just about anywhere in the Elemental Countries and people didn’t mind them the way they did spiders.

The size of the beetles varied from small ones to insects the size of puppies, and there are one or two that measure up to something horse sized - although she rarely interacted with those.

She doesn’t want beetles associated with any of her personas, but especially _Nanashi_ – that would mean trouble and a possibly devastating blow to her information network.

Yata straightens up at the knock on her door and threads her way over, her geta sandals click-clacking against the wooden flooring, and cracks the door open, keeping her smile up even as she notices the pink haired girl beside Shizune.

“Good morning, Kazuya-san,” the woman greets her.

“Shizune-san and - Haruno-san, was it?” Yata greets with a little dip of her head, noting the dark yukata Shizune is wearing with some internal relief. She briefly admires Sakura’s dark pink one, spotted with lighter pink flowers that spiral down it in a gentle pattern.

“You can call me Sakura, if you want,” the younger offers. “I hope you don’t mind me following along. It’s my day off and Tsunade-shishou insisted I do something other than study,” Sakura says a bit sheepishly but Yata senses no insincerity behind it. 

She doesn’t doubt that Sakura has the day off and she doesn’t doubt that the girl needs a break, but she strongly suspects that curiosity plays a large part here as well – along with a dose of suspicion.

“You know each other?” Shizune inquires, and Yata feels the hairs on the back of her neck rise at the narrow razor sharpness of her chakra.

 _This,_ Yata thinks with some healthy wariness, _is not someone to be crossed._

“We met briefly when I was accompanying Hinata-chan,” Yata tells her, stepping out to pull the door shut behind her, locking it shut despite knowing that a locked door means little to a shinobi other than a polite reminder of _please stay out._ “The two of you are former classmates, isn’t that right?”

Shizune’s chakra relaxes some as Sakura offers her a tentative smile.

-

“It’s not often I have the time to indulge like this,” Shizune says warmly as they make their way down the street.

“It’s important to find a moment to relax between everything,” Yata muses, still completely at a loss as to what they were going to do today. She keeps half an ear on the click-clack of her own geta beside the quiet gait of the two kunoichi as they make their way down the street.

Most shinobi quiet themselves naturally – it’s an ingrained habit that could be the difference between life and death.

Yata chose the geta for her charade as Kazuya Shiho exactly because they’re so different from her normal sleek boots. They’re a reminder to herself to act like a civilian, but a part of her also just enjoys the rhythmic noise of it and the crunch of gravel beneath the wood.

Playing at being a civilian is a dangerous thing, but Orochimaru had been a thorough teacher and Yata is nothing if not cautious to the extreme.

 _“Be wary of habits,”_ Orochimaru had told her. _“It’s the little details that’ll give you away.”_

“Have you been an author for long, Kazuya-san?” Sakura inquires, peering at her from around Shizune who’d taken the place in the middle.

“It’s been almost four years now since I published my first book,” Yata admits. “I never would have dreamt I’d actually be able to make a living of it -” Which she can’t, actually, but only Ichikawa needs to know anything about her finances. “- but here I am.”

For all that her books sell decently, most of it is invested back into her dealings as an information broker and spent on basic necessities for everyday travel.

If she had published her book before meeting Orochimaru it might have been different, but even though she’d been a scrappy forty-two-year-old inside the body of a twelve-year-old she’d started out with nothing - she’d _been_ nothing. With the body of a child her choices had been even more so limited without any shinobi skills to fall back on.

For all that she resents and fears Orochimaru, there is no denying that she would likely be dead without him. He had trained her and allowed her to make use of his resources to create the basis of her network - and now he reaps the benefits of it, with her at his beck and call.

He is a clever man, Orochimaru, and Yata has to admire that about him.

“It sounds dreamy – travelling and writing about romance,” Sakura says and Yata slants her a look, wondering at the wistful tone in her voice. “I don’t think I could do it – I would miss Konoha too much to ever leave it behind for so long.”

 _It always comes back to loyalty with Konoha shinobi,_ Yata thinks with a hum, well-aware that her nomadic lifestyle is considered a bit alien to the villages who brand their fellow shinobi traitors if they decide to leave.

Even marriage between villages is an extremely tricky and cautious thing because most villages simply didn’t get along – with occasional extreme cases of violence when bloodline limits were involved.

Civilians were allowed more freedom in such matters, not possessing the same level of village secrets or reaching the threat level of a good shinobi, but it is still considered pretty rare.

Yata finds the entire rift between the two classes interesting and her outside perspective on it allows her to exploit it thoroughly.

There’s always been a gap between shinobi and civilian life, and it makes some shinobi absolutely terrible at infiltration despite being able to change their very appearance. A side effect of training them from such a young age – it normalizes their behaviour and responses to things that would make many civilians queasy. 

“I liked Iwa just fine,” Yata lies. “And travelling as I do means I’m returning there at least once a year, sometimes more, if nothing else than to visit Tou-san.”

 _Tou-san_ being the contact Ichikawa had helped her set up with, a man named Kazuya Kai who didn’t mind claiming to have a travelling daughter from his first marriage, originally from Kumo but who’d moved to Iwa around the same time she started gaining some traction as an author, and she’d visited enough to secure a basis for the lie.

She had been relieved to get the news of his recent marriage since it left her with the perfect excuse to put a bit of distance between them as he prepared to welcome her ‘little sibling’ to the world. Her body is old enough now that people wouldn’t question her absence from home.

“Don’t you ever get lonely?"

“No,” she says simply, and she does not allow herself to dwell on how true or untrue that is.

“I travelled with Tsunade-sama for many years,” Shizune steps in smoothly when Sakura looked ready to keep pursuing the question. “You meet a lot of interesting people on the road.”

Yata dips her head. “True,” she agrees. “I wouldn’t be here with you, for example, if I’d remained in Iwa.”

“I suppose so,” Sakura concedes. “Is that how you met Hinata?”

“She showed me around when I visited for the Kyuubi festival,” Yata tells her, searching for a good topic to divert attention from herself and recalling that hint of wistfulness in Sakura’s eyes at the mention of _romance_. “You must excuse my curiosity,” Yata murmurs, meeting green eyes. “But as a romance author I’m naturally nosy about the affairs of others, and the life of shinobi are a fascinating thing. Any romantic interests in your life? Boyfriend, girlfriend." A pause. "Both-?”

To Yata’s delight this makes the girl actually turn red. “B-both?” she squeaks, eyes growing a bit wide and Yata exchanges a quick amused glance with Shizune who’d raised a hand to cover her smile.

“Both,” Yata agrees, mouth ticking up. “One for each arm,” she confirms, lowering her voice teasingly.

“Is- is that really a thing?” Sakura asks, sounding a bit scandalized, but there’s a sort of shrewd interest in her wide eyes that Yata is willing to tug at.

“Yes,” she agrees. “If you stop by the bookstore I’m holding my release at, ask a man named Ichikawa for the third book in my series and tell him I sent you. He’ll make sure you get one free of charge.”

Sakura’s eyes narrow with sudden doubt. “It’s not an _Icha Icha_ thing, is it?” she asks suspiciously.

“I’m not in the habit of handing out porn to unsuspecting teens, no,” Yata says with a hint of a smile.

“They’re good,” Shizune says with a wink at her when Yata glances at her in surprise. “You explore some curious themes,” is all she elaborates and Yata barely refrains from pushing at it, allowing it for what it is with a little dip of her chin.

Sakura glances between them but Yata recognises that eager sort of curiosity - the urge to know more, to consume.

“I’ll do that then,” Sakura says, nodding, and her smile is far more genuine now than it had been at the door. “Thank you, Kazuya-san.”

“Think nothing of it,” Yata murmurs back, pleased with the lessened suspicion from the Hokage’s apprentice. “And Shiho is fine.”

“Shiho-san then,” Sakura agrees with a firm nod.

 _Play good, play nice,_ Yata thinks to herself. _Don’t make them doubt_.

-

It doesn’t take long for them to reach their destination and Yata does her best to pretend she’s been prepared for the Ichimoku-an the entire time even as her heart pounds inside her chest. She takes a moment to glance around under the guise of appreciation, pretending to admire the fine mats and low relaxed atmosphere while looking for any hint of Shimura Danzo.

The tea house is her best bet - war hawks like Shimura don’t just come walking down the street.

If she meets the man she’ll be able to pick out his chakra the next time he’s near, and if she manages to get close enough she can thread it with her own as a marker. It’s a bit risky with other chakra sensitives in the village, but once it mixes with her target’s the two chakras will muddle together and only someone who is intimately familiar with either of them will be able to pick one from the other. Even on the off chance someone does, the chances of them being able to connect it with the civilian Kazuya Shiho is infinitely small.

There’s a large room where some of the guests drink their tea on their knees in front of low tables. Yata marks them carefully, picking up on the chakras in the private rooms – she counts eight, and she hopes two of three might be servers. She’ll know for sure if they move between the rooms.

Extending her sensitivity in such a way is sure to leave her with a headache but she only has maybe one or two chances at visiting this particular tea house without drawing attention to herself. The less she visits the more coincidental anything will seem and the less connected she’ll be.

That she has the Godaime’s apprentice and assistant both with her is sure to make her memorable already, even if it also offers her a natural excuse to be there. Maybe on her next visit she’ll get Hinata to bring her.

They’re brought to their own private room by a woman in traditional garb and a pleasant floral scent covering her secondary gender. Yata makes an absent note of this for future use.

Tea ceremonies hadn’t been something she’d partaken in during her first thirty-two years of life, but Orochimaru enjoys them and he’d made her sit through the process on more than one occasion when she’d happened to be there.

There’s always been something soothing about the careful steps of the _chanoyu._

They kneel down in the room and Shizune gives her an inquiring look when she exchanges low words with the server. The woman dips her head in acquiescence at Yata’s request for privacy - not unusual in a shinobi tea house. 

“I hope you don’t mind,” Yata murmurs when everything has been delivered and the door closed behind the server. She lifts the red _fukusa_ , folding it carefully before starting the first move of the tea ceremony, brushing gently down the tools.

She understands now what Shizune had meant about the breeze – the doors of the private room they’re open to a garden and Shizune has already pulled them wide, allowing cool air to spill into the otherwise warm room.

It’s late spring and in Konoha that means a hot sun overhead - Shizune had chosen the time well and her station as the Godaime’s apprentice had assured them a private room.

 _“If something is worth doing then it is worth doing well,”_ Orochimaru had told her more than once. Yata doubted Shizune would appreciate being compared to the snake sannin, but it was clearly something the woman also aspired to.

“Not at all,” Shizune murmurs, eyes regarding her thoughtfully. Sakura settles back into a less formal pose with the promise of it only remaining the three of them for the ceremony.

She watches Yata for a moment and then relaxes when she makes no move to protest it.

“When you told me you enjoyed the intricacies of the _chanoyu_ I didn’t think it was something you’d taken the time to master yourself. It is an unusual skill outside traditional clans and tea houses," Shizune comments.

“I learnt it from my Aunt,” Yata lies, and she hopes Orochimaru never finds out about her naming him as  _Uncle_ and _Aunt_ under different personas. She’s pretty sure he wouldn’t appreciate being called family by the likes of her.

But the closer something is to the truth the less of a lie it appears, and Yata knows to play the game carefully.

She lifts the lid of the tea pot with the _fukusa_ and places it gently aside, trading it for the wooden ladle and scooping it the hot water into the _chawan_ before adding three scoops of the green _matcha_ paste, everything carefully placed aside before she lifts the wooden whisk and starts the rhythmic motion of mixing it together.

If a tea master was preparing a proper _chanoyu_ inside a home, the preparations for it would have taken weeks – it is a very spiritual thing, as Yata has come to understand it.

She’d gotten ahold of some books about tea ceremonies after her first shaky experience with Orochimaru where she’d spent some forty minutes wondering if he was going through some slow ritualistic preparation for her death.

Here, in the tea house, it’s as formal as she sets it to be. Even if Sakura is no longer in the traditional kneeling position she’s attentive and quiet, clearly enjoying the slow care of the preparations while she leans halfway back into the sun, basking in the warmth and breeze.

“This is nice,” the pink haired girl murmurs with a small sigh of appreciation.

It’s quiet – Yata feels the hum of the seals in place to mute the noise from other customers, but the sound of birds from outside reaches their ears. The additional noise of the cicada creates a soft sort of atmosphere.

Outside their room Yata marks three servers, their own now on the lower floor among two more. This means five of the chakra signatures that remain are potential picks for Shimura Danzo - if she lucks out.

According to her sources, he visits the tea house some four times a week, often in the company the Sandaime’s old teammates – Utatane Koharu and Mitokado Homura – both with enough political clout that Yata had been a bit baffled by it when working through the information in preparation of the mission.

It pointed to the Sandaime not having been in a sound state of mind to handle the civilian and shinobi council before his death. Shimura in particular seemed to have made use of this to claim a good chunk of power for himself and continued to make use of it if his weekly visits to the tea house were any indication.

He’d been on the team under the Nidaime Hokage and Konoha was foolish enough to allow that to mean something.

Yata pours the last of the water and finishes the whisking, placing aside the _chawan._ Sakura folds up into a proper kneeling position and Yata stretches out across the tatami and offers Shizune the bowl as per tradition.

The other woman turns it, drinks, and wipes it before passing it to Sakura who echoes the motions with care. Then it is finally passed back to Yata, who bows  – and immediately stills, her forehead nearly touching the ground.

Only firm and ingrained habits make her straighten out and reach for the things needed to clean the tools in the aftermath of their use.

 _What is that?_ Yata wonders with a little shiver because -

 _That isn’t right,_ Yata thinks, unnerved – most of her attention now on tracking the guest who felt _off_ in a way she isn’t sure how to describe.

She gives the tools to Shizune and Sakura to inspect, keeping her head lowered as they do, her heart pounding hard inside her chest. The feeling caused by the nearby guest puts her teeth on edge, and she barely remembers to bow low once more, remaining still as Shizune and Sakura rise, Yata slowly following.

The door is slid open by a kneeling server who is respectfully bid goodbye and Yata follows at the other two shinobi, struggling against the sudden urge to turn right around and _leave._

“We need to do this again,” Sakura says as they make their way down the corridor, clearly having enjoyed the lull and quiet of the ceremony. “You think Shishou would enjoy it?”

“If you allow her to spike the tea,” Shizune mutters. “Maybe.”

Yata hears the words but they barely register.

 _Kakuzu wouldn’t have contacted me for nothing, not with that large of a sum – that in itself is reason enough to suspect Shimura Danzo of being involved in something under the nose of his Hokage, something with the potential interest in a group of SS-Rank missing-nin,_ Yata thinks as they slowly pass by the room the person with the strange chakra had been escorted into.

 _I have no evidence that this guest is Shimura Danzo,_ Yata thinks, even as she’s reaching out with her chakra.

She shivers at the icy _desperation_ that clings to this person’s chakra _–_ so strange and familiar and otherworldly _–_ threading it carefully with a print of her own, swallowing as it’s sucked into the whirlpool of _wrongness_ with a sort of hunger that can mean nothing good for anyone involved.

-

 _What the fuck, Konoha,_ Yata thinks that night while she lies on her back on the floor of her apartment, feeling the chakra thread deep underground among many thus-far unnoticed chakra signatures that quickly fold around it.

-

Yata misses telephones.

And emails. And texting. Having to rely on beetles to get her message to Kakuzu is the sort of thing that takes _time,_ and now acutely aware of the strange chakra that moves about the village with her own linked to it she’s getting increasingly paranoid.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite author!”

Yata very nearly snaps her chopsticks in two but she _doesn’t_ and she’s firmly congratulating herself on the fact when she turns around and offers Anko a little wave.

The purple haired woman is in full kunoichi get-up _–_ the sort meant to distract, Yata would guess, taking in the low-cut skirt and mesh shirt beneath the trench coat. The reptilian scent of Beta mixes with the coppery smell of blood that has yet to fade from whatever the woman has recently been up to.

T.I. is a nasty sort of business and Yata isn’t eager to get up close and personal with Anko inside her workplace _–_ which is what awaits her if she slips up during their interactions.

Playing at being someone else is exhausting.

 _I need a vacation from Konoha,_ Yata thinks even as she smiles.

At least she’s on her own and Yata counts that as a small mercy, patting the chair beside her invitingly. The small food stall she’s sitting at has fried squid on the menu.

“My treat,” she offers.

Anko’s eyes do that complicated thing again, but Yata doesn’t have time to dwell on it as Anko’s coat flares out behind her, her grin sharp and an arm suddenly thrown around Yata’s shoulder, weighing her down as she settles heavily onto the chair.

“You know, most civilians would hesitate to be seen with me,” Anko says, ordering a large dish of calamari from the old stall owner and his daughter as Yata curls her hands uncomfortably around the wrist tucked too close to her throat, knowing there was little she could do while in disguise as Kazuya Shiho. “I don’t know if you’re just ignorant or naïve.”

“Maybe I just like giving people the benefit of the doubt.” Yata says, smile straining.

“Yeah?” Anko presses.

 _“Yeah,”_ Yata hisses, and Anko’s eyes glitter as they shove into her vision.

“That’s more like it,” the former apprentice of the Snake Sannin says with a sharp grin, easing back. Yata rubs at her neck. “I don’t trust someone who smiles as much as you do. People who smile have something to hide.”

“Anyone ever told you you’re paranoid?” Yata asks, well aware of the irony even as Anko throws her head back with cackling laugh.

“Most of us shinobi are,” Anko says, smile easing as she plants her elbow on the table, resting her chin in the palm of her hand. “You should know that if you’re going to keep hanging around us, little _Shi-chan_.”  

It might sound innocent enough but Anko’s tongue twists around the nickname, turning it into the pronunciation for _death_.

 _You have a terrible sense of humour,_ lingers on her tongue but Yata doesn’t allow herself to voice it.

“You know, I read your books,” Anko says through a mouthful once the food has arrived. “Or, well, one of them – you know, for research.”

“Is that so?” Yata says, dipping one of her fried squid rings into something yellow and garlicky that tastes really good even if she misses the addition of lime – it’s not quite season for them in Konoha yet. “What did you think of it?”

Anko orders them both a tall glass of ale as she chews through the two squid in her mouth. “Well,” she says after washing it down while Yata draws hers in for a tentative sniff – not really one for beer of any kind. “You clearly have a kink for shinobi – no surprise there,” she says breezily, and Yata chokes on her next bite, hurrying to wash it down, ale be damned. “Creative, a bit different – very dramatic and quite sexy for something that didn’t have a single sex scene in it.”

“So – good?”

Anko tips her hand in a _so-so_ motion but she’s grinning, and Yata lets out a huff of amusement into the ale, deciding it isn’t so bad and taking another long drink of it.

-

Yata wakes up in the night with a start, her hand clamped down on a foreign wrist far too close to her face. Chakra coils up through her as she bares her teeth, preparing to fight, her black eyes meeting an amused pair of pink ones.

“Heh.” The man smirks at her, leaning closer, inhaling her scent deeply, and Yata registers the familiar black cloak with the red clouds, even half-slanted off the man’s shoulders as it is. “Kakuzu did say you have some _spunk_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire month just kinda ended up socially overloading me and it turns out I am not made for working 10 days in a row, recover four days and then work another 7 and - I know! I'm just as surprised as you are! Note. Sarcasm.
> 
> Anyway, this week since returning home has just been one long road to a championship in napping (to my dog's delight).
> 
> Send your thanks to Seltix for this one because I'm too tired mentally to get into Yata's clever mind and just scrolling through the chapter made me crave a nap. But they helped me Beta this and I just now realized that I hadn't uploaded as, apparently, it's been sitting in my drafts (because people are really going to read it there, won't they, brain?). 
> 
> The Konoha Arc is in full-swing and whoa, look at that - another Akatsuki member peeked forth! magine that. On a completely (not so) unrelated note - I pegged Hidan's eyes down as purple now but man, I was torn. Pink? Purple? I would google but wrote Law's (One Piece) as blue and people were like?? So apparently I am... bad at deciding such things. (turns out manga Law has golden eyes and anime Law has grey? like? I swear they were blue in the AMV I hit up but alas).
> 
> I am vaguely sleep-deprived so I hope this isn't a messy note. It probably is. 
> 
> Artsy-death on tumblr if you want to swing by there, comment field is just--- whatever you want to make it into. I read and I respond and it's all a very harmonious relationship between me and you, I promise. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


	9. Konoha IV

Yata breathes in and the heavy reek of Beta fills up her lungs – an aching sting of something strange layered in it, pricking at her tongue as she breathes out, fingers tightening and shoving him away from her to silent steps inside the dark apartment, his head cocking to regard her with eyes that catches and shines with the light of the moon.

“Who are you?” Yata hisses quietly as chakra itches behind her eyes and prickles at her fingers, fire building at the depth of her lungs. “And why are you here?” Smoke hisses out from her clenched teeth and the man’s eyes fills with a strange sort of appreciation as an infuriating smirk curls his lips.

“Oh don’t be like that,” he drawls and Yata tenses as one hand reaches to curl around the handle of the giant scythe on his back, swinging it down to rest the three blades against the floor as he leant against it with an easy and relaxed body-language. “Did you or did you not contact that bastard Kakuzu for help dealing with some-“ He wiggles his fingers – “ _spooky_ sort of chakra?”

“I did contact _Kakuzu_ , yes,” Yata agrees, narrowing her eyes upon him before huffing, teeth catching at her lower lip. “You his new partner then?” she guesses, drawing one foot up and tucking it beneath her thigh, feigning ease as she cocks her head to the side. “You got a name or should I stick with Creep?”

Silver hair slicked back, sharp features and pink eyes – a curious sort of necklace dangling from around his neck in a long chain, a circle with a triangle caught inside of it and worn with obvious pride.

Akatsuki were a peculiar sort of group and underestimating its members is a dangerous thing but he’d put her in a bad mood startling her from her sleep and the itch to get rid of him crawls beneath her skin.

“Kitten got bite,” the man says with approval and Yata’s fingers twitches. “Name’s Hidan, _bitch_.” He jerks a thumb towards his chest. “And don’t misunderstand – the only reason I’m in Akatsuki is to spread the name of my Lord Jashin. That bastard Kakuzu sending me here? That was not in the deal.”

“That bastard Kakuzu sending _you_ was not in _my_ deal,” Yata bites out, mentally sorting through the situation, the symbol around his neck and her current mission. “Spread his name, you say?” she settles on finally as pink eyes sharpens and there’s no denying the fanaticism that blossoms inside them as he leans forward.

“You interested?” he wonders, eagerness in his gaze. “Lord Jashin demands nothing less but utter death and destruction.” He spreads his fingers and clenches down, the threat clear.

Yata stares at him, feeling the way his chakra reaches towards hers, brushing up against her not unlike a cat, eager and attentive but ready to lash out at the first _no._

“He sounds like the sort that might appreciate a good killing,” Yata says in lieu of answer and Hidan pauses, chakra sharpening, listening with a coil of hunger that prickles at her skin. “That’s why Kakuzu sent you here – right?” she presses.

Hidan kicks out and drops down on her bed with a little bounce. “Murder and mayhem,” he says. “Why didn’t you start with that first?”

 _Because it wasn’t the original plan,_ Yata thinks but does not voice, staring at the shinobi in front of her, feeling the foulness of the other pacing low beneath the village and struggling against a deep unsettling feeling of being in way over her head.

_But then, what else is new._

-

Yata creates a shadow clone, spins it around and yanks it shirt up to slap a tag in place at its spine – reinforcing it to take at least one or two hits before dispersing.

“If I’m not back by morning head to Ichikawa, tell him you don’t feel well but that you don’t want to be on your own. When he offers you the couch in the backroom you take it and you stay there until I come find you,” Yata instructs it, aware of the way pink eyes regard her quietly from the window, impatience threading through his scent.

“Yes, ma’am,” her clone salutes, already stepping back and towards the bed to bury down which Yata might have spared time to envy if she wasn’t busy scrambling through the many ways this could go wrong.

It’s 2 a.m. and she’s barely been awake for an hour but Hidan had made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t sticking around and for all that he was threatening to send all her plans down the drain she had to agree it was risky having him around which meant that he was right in putting a time limit on it even if their reasons for it didn’t align.

He didn’t exactly strike her as the sort who knew how to _lie low_ and Yata wants him nowhere near her persona as Kazuya Shiho.

 _Fuck,_ Yata thinks to herself with feeling as she pulls down her bottom lip and unseals her cloak, grasping and reaching for one of the seals near the neck with a brush of her chakra, catching the scroll that appears in a _poof_ of smoke and rolling it out across the floor.

“You’ll stand out too much like that,” Yata says tersely, pressing her palm down on the third one and tucking the Konoha ANBU gear aside for herself with the cow mask on top.

It takes her two seals to find one that she’s reasonably sure might fit him and Hidan sinks to a knee in front of her, humming in interest as he grabs and gives the sheep mask some idle consideration.

“Not as useless as you look,” he drawls with a smidge of approval and Yata slots him an unimpressed look.

-

Yata trades her black wig for a short brown one and then yanks the hood up, slipping the ANBU standardized katana in place at her back.

“The ANBU code was-“ Yata runs through five signs and Hidan’s eyes dart down to take them in even as he tugs at the white vest “-two days ago. I haven’t been able to get close enough to get a sense for how often they change them.”

Hidan cracks his neck. “Not like we’ll need them,” he says arrogantly, slipping the mask in place on his face and looking out at her with pink eyes, impatience throbbing insistently through his chakra.

Yata runs through the signs for _dog-bear-ram_ and allows the henge to settle over her, grimacing at the pale skin that stretches down over her arms all the way to the tips of her fingers.

The short brown haired wig is replaced by short curly black hair and blue eyes.

She steps and vanishes out in a splatter of water, Hidan’s grin turning bloodthirsty behind the mask as he disappeared after her in pursuit.

Inside the small hotel apartment Yata’s clone opens her eyes and trots over to the bathroom to fetch some towels to clean up after them.

-

Yata has spent two and a half week in Konoha and it’s far from enough to get a sense for rotations so she doesn’t even try, moving low and silent with Hidan at her heels, senses tuned carefully to catch anyone moving in their direction while picking towards the apartment where she’d felt the foul chakra slip down to disappear beneath more than once.

She lands quietly on a rooftop and Hidan is just a step behind, standing tall as she crouches.

“This the place?” he drawls, unimpressed, his nose flaring beneath the mask.

“Yes,” Yata says quietly. “There are two guards inside – one is just inside the door, the other is further inside on the right side of the-“

Yata stares blankly at the empty space beside her and then she’s moving, swinging down and through the window, twisting and drawing her kunai, lodging it deep into the neck of the second one as Hidan slashes the first one in an arc of blood that paints up the walls as Yata’s other hand slams down on the wood, a silence seal rilpling over the area as the Akatsuki member twists and behead the woman to a dull _thunk_ as her head rolls across the ground.

Yata stares at Hidan, mildly horrified.

“Have you ever heard of stealth?” she hisses, drawing the kunai out and catching the body by the scruff, lowering it down quietly, wiping the blade clean at its collar before straightening up and shoving it back into her thigh holster.

“Sure I have,” Hidan agrees, ripping the woman’s shirt open to bare her stomach and Yata cocks her head, watching as he shoves his kunai deep and draws a round circle of blood that bubbles and spills, finishing it off with an upside-down triangle before raising the kunai almost absently to drag his tongue up it as he straightens up.

“Is this going to be a thing?” Yata asks warily. “Because I don’t think we have the time to do it with each and every one we come across.”

“You leave the killing to me,” Hidan says, rolling his shoulders and there’s a heady promise in the pink of his eyes as he fixates upon her. “And you’ll go find whatever it is they want you to find. _Deal?_

Yata very much doubts she had any real say in it and she huffs as she steps past him, spreading her chakra down against the wooden flooring as Hidan watches her, fingers dipping up beneath the hem of his shirt to brush against the seal she’d painted on the inside to seal his triple-bladed scythe, eagerness clear in his body-language as he watches her.

She presses down, turning her nails sharper and thinner with a twist of the henge and dragging them down until they snag and she catches the kunai Hidan launches at her, shoving it down deep and bending the hidden door open.

“I need at least fifteen minutes,” Yata tells him quietly as he steps up beside her. “The man who might be Shimura Danzo is to the east in what I can only guess is his office for always retreats there on his own.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Hidan twists and catches the scythe with a twirl and Yata takes a step back as his chakra flares, an enormous hunger for violence exploding out of him. “Lord Jashin, please watch as I make this sacrifice in your name!” He tears the protective vest and the shirt beneath it clean off, cackling as he drops down into the darkness just as Yata snags her chakra to his.

It doesn’t take long before the first scream runs out, the clash of metal and Hidan’s laughter echoing through the underground tunnels as she lands quietly on the ground.

 _Come on,_ Yata thinks, closing her eyes and tracing the foul chakra alongside Hidan’s, making her way quietly down the corridor, reaching down after passing the third dead ANBU-like body and sealing her katana in favour of the tip-less tanto they all seemed to favour.

 _It’s all in the details,_ Yata thinks, finding the body of a brown haired woman among the dead and removing her mask, running a critical eye over her face and body before shifting her henge in her likeness, trading cow mask for that of a blank one and slapping an explosion seal down on her before leaving the room behind, heartbeat loud inside her chest as Hidan extinguished chakra signature after chakra signature.

 _Akatsuki is a terrifying thing,_ Yata acknowledges to herself, slipping down a side-corridor as the foul chakra _finally_ moves to investigate Hidan’s distraction.

Yata breaks the neck of one fake ANBU and twists to intercept another, slapping a silence seal onto their chin as she twists below it, shoving up to get her shoulder clean up into their solar plexus and as they choke without noise behind the mask Yata twists around them, grasping and slamming her kunai deep into their spine and twisting, legs folding without purchase as she cut the nerves clean.

They crash down and Yata pushes down with her palms, landing onto her feet and turning to shove the flat of her sandal down before a desperate hand could grasp for the handle, burying it through, leaving them to choke and bleed out behind her without anyone to hear their screams.

There’s no guard outside the office and Yata strains her senses, fingers brushing down and over the door frame, searching for any sign of tampering and potential trigger mechanisms as she mentally counts out seven minutes, knowing that she needed to hurry up as Hidan’s chakra flickered and grew, violence and eagerness spiralling somewhere in the depth of the underground base.

The foul chakra is still lurking – isn’t engaging – and Yata draws a breath, knowing that there was no second chances in this, and pushes the door open and smacks another silence seal down to make sure any unnecessary noise wouldn’t be heard outside the room.

A strange silence greets her in an office that – at first glance – is surprisingly barren as she warily closes the door behind her and slinks into it, ignoring the desk completely in favour of sliding her palm over the rocky walls with a low hum of chakra beneath her palm until something echoes in response and she twists it, jerking back as the wall split down the middle and draws back to open into another room.

Hundreds of scrolls crowd inside the room and Yata barely resists a smile.

 _Jackpot,_ she thinks, already unsealing her cloak and then and then a scroll with rows of empty seals just waiting to be filled as she spreads it out across the floor.

 _Think, think, think –_ Yata tells herself as she forces herself to calm, to focus, gaze darting among the scrolls. _You can’t bring them all so what do you take?_

Her gaze glides between the small ones, reaching and unsealing with a snap of her wrist, noting _mission report_ and reaching deeper, grasping blindly for an armful of them, making sure to reach far back, letting her senses guide her to those that had been touched the most by the person with the foul reeking chakra, a crawl of ill-ease leaving her cold as she shoved them down and sealed them with a twist of her palm, drawing a line of her blood over it to lock it to her signature.

A large scroll that she can’t unseal follows into the next, a mix of new and old scrolls crammed into seal after seal as she counts out eleven and then twelve minutes, stilling in place when the foul chakra suddenly started moving away from Hidan at a pace that made her twist around and roll her scroll shut, sealing it back into her cloak and then into the inside of her lip.

Someone bursts into the office just as Yata claps her palms together and shoots a heavy wall of rock from the ground that stretches to accommodate her in a way that will never cease to be strange no matter how many times she does it.

“Tora-?” a man’s voice rings out and even a moment of surprise, even a single second of hesitation, could be the deciding factor between victory and triumph, life and death.

Yata bumps her mask up to free her mouth with the edge of her palm before running through the seals and breathing in just as the rock explode behind her.

_Katon: Goukakyuu no Jutsu!_

Yata breathes out only to twist low, choking it down mid-jutsu to avoid the cane that had suddenly become a sword and running through the seals, slamming her palms against the wall behind her and concaving it as the old man, who could only be Shimura Danzo, spat out water to prevent the fire that had snagged at the closest pile of mission scrolls.

She’s barely managed two steps before she goes high beneath another swing, feet sealing against the roof, a shiver running through her at having that chakra that felt so familiar and wretched at the same time so close to her as she pelts blindly towards Hidan’s chakra still going strong.

“Not so fast!” Shimura’s voice rolls out and Yata’s eyes instinctively flare red, three black tomoe counting out in the backdrop of the colour and slowing the world around her as she draws the tanto to intercept, throwing a genjutsu up over them between one breath and the other and gritting her teeth as the strength of the man sent her sliding back against the rock of the ceiling.

“To wear the face and mask of one of my most loyal,” Shimura says in a low voice that contrasts against the ire of his chakra which whips around him, despair rising and surging with his right arm as she’s jerks back and away, intercepting and twisting around the sharp jabs. “Impudent chit!”

 _He can’t afford to draw attention from the rest of the village,_ Yata thinks, twisting her hands into a _kawarimi_ and landing lightly, hearing the dull thunk of the sword sliding through the target dummy as she veers left, twin kunai hitting the sides of the door opening behind her with a dull _thunk_ and the sizzling of two explosive seals.

“Hidan!” Yata calls out sharply and there’s a responding flare to his chakra down the long corridor just water hits the first tag, the other crushed in a flat second later to a dying sizzle inside Shimura’s left fist before he’s lurching towards her – faster now and with another sort of urgency as Yata runs through the seals and breathes in, exhaling a wave of heat that rolls over the floor, catching at anything wooden only to choke as an arm wrapped around her neck.

“I want her-“ Shimura calls but Yata goes dead-weight, catching the offender wrong-footed and bringing them down with her in a rough roll, twisting and pushing away from one wall to explode them into the other, angling the not-ANBU’s head to splatter with a crunch of brain matter down the back of her head and neck.

Yata’s hand wraps around the tongue of the man, snapped off by his own teeth and spilling down her shirt as Shimura’s sword goes through arm a second later. She lurches her lower body up, kicking hard against his shoulder to send him stumbling back and away from her as she twists her arm to yank the sword out of his palm, gritting her teeth and pulling it out of her with a wet noise and splatter of blood, twirling it around to grasp in a slick grip as she fell into a defensive stance.

“I think I’ve changed my mind about killing you,” Shimura says with a dark roll of chakra and a promise in his eye that sends a shiver down her spine. “I think I’m going to keep you for myself.”

“Sorry,” Yata says with mock-cheerfulness as she lowers herself into a near crouch. “But I’m not for sale.” _At least not to the likes of you._

Before Shimura can respond he’s forced to go low to avoid the red scythe that tears through the air, Hidan landing and twisting to bring it into another swing, cackling as Shimura buries a kunai into his abdomen.

“Killing your own subordinates?” Hidan leers, his skin black but marked with white bone-like patterns, mask long abandoned and hair more red than silver, eyes shining eerily as he _steps into the kunai,_ coughing out a glob of red as it buried deep into his abdomen. “I’m going to enjoy sacrificing you to Jashin-sama,” he promises and Shimura’s only visible eye widen before he lurches back, the jagged end of the scythe catching and tearing at his shoulder, drawing blood to a flare of despair that makes her grunt.

Yata steps back, crouches low and then explodes into movement, catching Hidan’s pink eyes as he turns, scythe going low to force Shimura high, his shoulder turned to allow her to plant the flat of her foot against it as a spring board as she goes left, skidding over the side of the wall, rocks shooting out as she meets a single furious brown eye, his own cane twisting through the air and with no place to go his palm wraps around the sharp blade, going deep in a splatter of blood.

In a flat second later Yata twists through the labyrinth of sharp rocks and wraps around his right sleeve, clamping sharp as Hidan bursts through it all, Shimura twisting the blade to intercept as Hidan presses him up against a wall of stones and Yata yanks back, tearing the sleeve clean off.

Hidan whistles low, twirling his scythe up to rest it against his shoulder as Shimura slammed his palm down on his arm in an attempt to hide.

“That’s messed up,” Hidan says with appreciation as Yata stares at the red eyes of the sharingan buried into his flesh – rolling madly with despair, an undercurrent of the emotions last felt by their wearers imprinted into the very chakra still clinging to them.

“That’s disgusting,” Yata says with feeling, neck prickling as her gaze darts over her kin’s eyes. “Anyone ever told you that grave robbing is severely frowned upon?” she asks, easing back.

“As if they ever made it into their graves,” Hidan scoffs beside her as he cracks his neck. “I’ve always wanted to bring home a _souvenir_.” Hidan lurches into movement, mania in his gaze. “You think Itachi-san will thank me, _huh_!?” he calls, a wide-grin splitting his face as Shimura intercepts, stones crackling and breaking as he skids back from the force of the enormous scythe but pushing away to run through signs as Hidan follows in hot pursuit, lashing out and cackling widely as he moves with surprising grace.

The walls are narrow and it says something about Hidan’s skill that he manoeuvres so well despite it, his grasp high up the handle and trading reach for force.

“Hidan- we need to leave,” Yata hisses as she turns, feeling the way more chakra signatures spills down the secret underground facilities, eyes narrowing behind the mask, sharingan still working to slow the world around her.

Hidan spits out a glob of blood, teeth bared in a bloody grin. “Fuck off,” he tells her. “I’m not leaving until this bastard is on his back with his chest carved open in honour of Jashin-sama.”

 _Kakazu,_ Yata thinks with a calm she really doesn’t feel. _You owe me a drink for this._

“You sure you can do it?” she presses tensely.

“Hell yeah,” Hidan growls and something about the tone of his voice makes her inclined to trust him, cursing internally as she grabs for brush and ink bottle, biting a hole at her palm as she pulls the stop open and lets it pool into it, stirring it together and dipping the tip of the brush into it.

 _“Don’t rush it,”_ Orochimaru’s voice rings through her mind as she draws a wide circle on the walls and connecting lines into the middle. _“Center it and keep a constant loop of chakra running through the brush, using your blood as a guiding point.”_

The explosion seal is a common one and Yata draws it out in wide sweeps, aware of the way Hidan makes sure to keep Shimura away from her even as he pushes forward, the sharingan spinning in his arm, two already closed shut and his chakra pulsing against her senses, desperate as he fails to overtake the Akatsuki member.

 _Had you been in your prime you might have stood a chance,_ Yata thinks as she slams her palm in the middle of her creation. _But you’re old and he won’t stop until you’re dead._

She gathers and pulses her chakra through the seal, concaving the corridors in an explosion that rolls down in a way that is so far from discrete and puts Yata’s teeth on edge even as chakra signatures scrambles back as rocks splinter and shoots down sea of violence, egged by her chakra in hot pursuit.

It sucks at her reserves like a punch in the gut, but Yata twists and lurches stones out from opposite ends of a narrow corridor, abruptly ending the eight signatures that were approaching, burying a spike low in pursuit to the one who’d gone underground to sudden nothingness.

Outside the foul chakra of Shimura dies off abruptly and Yata yanks her palms from the seal, gasping for breath and staggering, legs threatening to fold beneath her as she blinked white spots from her eyes.

But in the next inhalation an arm wraps around her midriff and yanks her up and over a bloody shoulder, her hands sinking into flesh stained black and white, folding to wrap her legs around his midriff to anchor herself to him. She notes that he'd taken the time to cleave off Shimura's arm and she takes some strange satisfaction in it as she grabs for it, sealing it with a side-ways look from pink eyes but no voiced protest.

“This is the least discreet operation I’ve ever run in my life,” Yata gasps into his ear, looping an arm around his neck, and Hidan cackles even as he splits into some twenty clones as they burst into the air, Konoha spread out below them for a single overwhelming moment of triumph.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yata: *tries to run a smooth, quiet operation*
> 
> Hidan: *exists*
> 
> I've had this in my documents for a while now but sometimes I have trouble finding the voice again, so to say, but Yata is such a love and I knew it was only a matter of time and look, here we are! Changing canon one disaster at the time. 
> 
> I think I managed to clean up the fighting scenes to make sense but I am sorry if they are a bit messy - they're not really my forte but this chapter wouldn't make sense without them so I had to work my way through it the best I could. 
> 
> I'm not nearly done with the Konoha arc yet and there's a lot that's going to get rolling with this and just, woof. 
> 
> I love writing Hidan. I didn't really get his death in canon and we're levelling up the Akatsuki into some more sensible levels because Pein wouldn't just recruit _anyone_. So - yeah, he took out Danzo, because he's old and a Hidan's a force of nature.
> 
> Thank you for your brilliant comments and your patience with me, means the world, what a blessing.
> 
> I hang about tumblr as artsy-death and this has been chapter 9 of Criminals and Dreamers. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


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